Writing Home - Softcover

Polly Devlin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910258334 ISBN 13: 9781910258330

Publisher: Pimpernel Press Ltd, 2019

Synopsis

In the pieces brought together in Writing Home, Polly Devlin, most bewitching of writers, covers subjects that range over her whole life and thought. She writes about places: about her childhood deep in the Irish countryside (where, in the late 1950s the first electricity poles looked `literally out of place'); her sudden transition, at the age of twenty-two, to Swinging Sixties London, where she worked for Vogue (`it's like being a provincial at Versailles'), on to New York, back to London then to the English countryside, and Paris, Venice, St Petersburg, the world over - and always back to London and New York. She writes about the people she has known, among them Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Peggy Guggenheim, Diana Vreeland (`as fantastical as a unicorn'), Jean Shrimpton, Grace Coddington, Princess Margaret (who came to dinner and did the washing up - `the most un-charming person I ever met'). And she writes about the issues that have preoccupied her: about emigration, feminism (`I grew up in a society where men were fundamental and women were secondary'), reading, writing, collecting, shopping, style, houses, dogs, rooks, hares, dreams, contrarians, friendship and the kindness of strangers; about daughters and mothers and mothers-in-law; and about wishes; and faux pas.

About this title

Review:

Whatever sets her going - and whatever her tone, whether angry, rueful, funny, exuberant, joyous or disabused - Polly Devlin's reflections make an impact. She is a champion of right thinking, up to the hilt in crusading commentary, always on the side of the angels." - Dublin Review of Books

"Eloquent and open-minded, Writing Home stands testimony to a life well-lived. It champions feminism as 'The F Word'. I'd add that it exemplifies the virtues of family and fearlessness." - Country Life

"...affectionate sketches of friends including Nuala O’Faolain and her brother-in-law Seamus Heaney...ring with truth and tenderness." - Irish Times

"Polly nails with detail and devilment the very essence of an encounter or an issue. After a glimpse into that quicksilver mind whose interior we imagine is as eclectic, cluttered and joyful as the actual interiors she creates, we are the better for it...a treat." - The Gloss

"Required reading for women of 'd'un certain age', read it and smile." - RTE.com

"A glorious serendipitous mix of material...[the author] retains a very clear voice that is her own. She's also a fantastic writer. She manages to convey a huge amount with a few well-chosen words, so that after reading her book I feel I know her intimately and like her tremendously." - The Chiswick Calendar

"I passionately love this book...the writing and the spirit, the cauldron of lives and language, the moral rigour, the observation...I wish I had published it." - Carmen Callil

About the Author:

Polly Devlin is a writer, broadcaster and filmmaker. She holds an OBE for services to literature. After spending her childhood in Northern Ireland, at the age of twenty-two she took up her first job - as a writer, and soon features editor, on British Vogue, at the heart of 1960s London. A couple of years later she was again transported, to New York, to work for Diana Vreeland on American Vogue - where, once more, she was very much part of the scene she wrote about in her newspaper column and articles including for The Sunday Times, New Statesman and Observer. Her first book, All of Us There, is now a Virago Modern Classic. The most recent, New York: Places to Write Home About (Pimpernel Press, 2017; published in the United States by Gibbs Smith, as New York: Behind Closed Doors) was greeted with delight on both sides of the Atlantic. She now divides her time between London and New York, where, until her recent retirement, she taught Creative Non-Fiction at Barnard College, Columbia University. Polly Devlin lives in West London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pimpernel Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1910258334
• ISBN 13: 9781910258330
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256