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Michael Kerr meets Dervla Murphy
Once travellers shared opinions and experiences - now they queue silently to use a computer
Michael Kerr meets Dervla Murphy in a revealing interview for The Telegraph
In Wheels within Wheels, an autobiography published in 1979 that followed seven travel books, Dervla Murphy said: “One never writes anything of which one does not feel ashamed on seeing it in print.” Does she still feel that way, I asked her last week. “Oh, yes. I wouldn’t dream of reading anything I’ve written.” But surely, in her 84th year, she could look back on her 24 books and think that in one or two she came close to realising her intention…
She chewed a while on one of the olives the barmaid had set down with her pint of beer (her favourite tipple), and eventually said: “Probably Gaza and the new one, yes. And I think the Rwanda one.” Another pause. “In Rwanda, I found it possible to be not exactly neutral but less sort-of decisive than I am about the Palestinian situation.” It was the latest book, Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine, that had brought her to London from her home in Co Waterford, Ireland. Following the death this month from cancer of her son-in-law (to whom the book is dedicated), her publishers had told her she could be spared the publicity round, but she wanted to keep busy.
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Travel writer Dervla Murphy tells her most harrowing story
"Weeds," says Dervla Murphy in her deep, melodious voice, in what sounds like a mixture of mild irritation but also delight at the carpet of forget-me-nots covering the courtyard of the Old Market. This collection of stone buildings hidden away behind iron gates up a cobbled laneway in Lismore, County Waterford, is the home of the legendary Irish travel writer.
Dervla talks to Rosamund Burton of The Sydney Herald
"Weeds," says Dervla Murphy in her deep, melodious voice, in what sounds like a mixture of mild irritation but also delight at the carpet of forget-me-nots covering the courtyard of the Old Market. This collection of stone buildings hidden away behind iron gates up a cobbled laneway in Lismore, County Waterford, is the home of the legendary Irish travel writer.
Murphy has lit a fire in the main living area. It's not something she would usually dream of doing, she admits, even though the Old Market has no heating, but she has a guest staying. We don't linger in the warmth, but walk back across the courtyard to her study. While I wish I'd worn several more layers, Murphy is unfazed by the cold.
I first met Murphy with my parents in 1981, soon after we moved to Lismore, and it was the start of a long friendship. She and her daughter, Rachel, then lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of town. Much to my delight at the age of 18, Murphy dispatched me on her bicycle to Maddens Pub to buy her some beer. Not only did I share the name, Roz, with this bicycle, but also Murphy had cycled on it from Dunkirk to Delhi. Her first book, Full Tilt (1965), was about that journey, and the start of her travel writing career.
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Dervla Murphy at 80: Living at full tilt
I vividly remember my first meeting with Dervla Murphy in 1979. Husband George and I had just arrived at a hostal in Otavalo, Ecuador, while researching our guide to Backpacking in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. I emerged from our room to find George chatting to a tough-looking woman with an Irish accent. She was telling him where to buy good yoghurt . . .
Irish cycle tourer, author of 23 books and one of the great travellers of our age turns 80 today. Hilary Bradt celebrates a feisty and freewheeling life in Wanderlust Magazine
I vividly remember my first meeting with Dervla Murphy in 1979. Husband George and I had just arrived at a hostal in Otavalo, Ecuador, while researching our guide to Backpacking in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. I emerged from our room to find George chatting to a tough-looking woman with an Irish accent. She was telling him where to buy good yoghurt. As she returned to one of the basic rooms that faced the central quadrangle, we held a hushed conversation.
“Do you think that’s Dervla Murphy?” George asked (we had heard that she was mule-trekking in Peru with her nine-year-old daughter, researching a book).
“Oh no,” I said, “she’s a proper writer; she wouldn’t stay in a place like this!”
But later that day George asked her anyway. Her face conveyed a mixture of surprise and dismay. “I’ll get some rum,” she said.
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Around the world in 80 years
Dervla Murphy rarely gives interviews. She is one of our most senior and prolific travel writers – more than 20 books in a half-a-century career – but she is extremely publicity-shy, from an age before blog and spin were part of a writer’s toolkit. She’s not a J D Salinger – there’s the odd public sighting or visit to an Irish bar – but this was her first interview for many years . . .
Hugh Thomson discusses the art of travel writing with Dervla Murphy
Dervla Murphy rarely gives interviews. She is one of our most senior and prolific travel writers – more than 20 books in a half-a-century career – but she is extremely publicity-shy, from an age before blog and spin were part of a writer’s toolkit. She’s not a J D Salinger – there’s the odd public sighting or visit to an Irish bar – but this was her first interview for many years.
We were meeting at the Royal Geographical Society, a place where “a drink” usually means a sherry in the director’s office, and to fortify herself for the ordeal Dervla sent out for some Guinness and managed two pints before lunch. In the flesh, she’s cheery, engaging and with a determined gleam to her eye. She never looks back – or rereads any of her books once dispatched to her publishers, even now when many of the early ones are being reissued to mark her approaching 80th birthday. But any worries I had about her diffidence were quickly blown away. Once she gets talking, she has the boldness, as they say in Ireland, of the very shy . . .