Life
1928- ; son of Collis Somerville-Large, surgeon; raised on Fitzwilliam Place; ed. Dublin; lived at Farmhill, Dundrum and afterwards at Laragh Hse.; spent his childhood in Kerry; worked Afghanistan as a young man; issued travel works including The Grand Irish Tour (1982); Capaghglass (1985) - on a Kerry fishing village where he spent much time in childhood - short-listed for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize; The Irish Country House: A Social History (1995); Dublin: The Fair City (1996); The Irish Country House: A Social History (1995); with Jason Hawkes [phot.], Ireland from the Air (1997)
| Fiction |
| Memoir |
|
| :Commentary |
|
[ top ]
Quotations
Laragh House, in An Irish Childhood (London: Constable & Robinson 2002): 'A previous owner had been connected by marriage to the Bartons and Childers associated with Glendalough House, who had played their considerable part in recent Irish history. But Mr Booth did not appear to have been interested in patriotism or politics. We were told that he had hanged himself from the chandelier in the main hall after sustaining gambling debts in Monte Carlo.’ (p.109.)
References
Bernard Share, ed., Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992), contains extract from To the Navel of the World (London: Hamish Hamilton 1987).
A Living Dog (London: Crime Club 1982), 181pp. [see details] The minor pilferings of antiques from his old aunt are the beginning of an involvement in a major theft, blackmail, and even murer for an inpecunious Irish school teacher.
An Irish Childhood (2002) - publisher’s notice: Peter Somerville-Large grew up with his brother Phil in a nursery world at the top of a smart house in Dublin from which they could watch Fitzwilliam Place far below, with the horse drawn delivery vans, the animals being driven to market and their father's patients arriving to visit the consulting rooms on the ground floor. The family had houses in the country too, with livestock and vegetable gardens and a bevy of eccentric relations, among them Edith Somerville (of Somerville and Ross fame). When Peter was five, his father bought an island - 80 bare rocky acres on the north shore of the Kenmare River in County Kerry - which he saw as paradise. There were parties, sailing trips and fishing expeditions. This biography takes the reader back to the sensations and excitements of children, and paints a picture of a world at once so recent and yet now vanished. (Google Books - online; accessed 11.09.2023.)
Capaghglass (London: Hamish Hamilton 1985) - publisher’s notice: For generations the seasonal flow of life in the area has followed the traditional pattern as farmers, fishermen and townspeople rub shoulders in the main square overlooking the harbour. The author has captured the life of a place at a critical moment, sandwiched between the past and the future. Part social document, part lyric poem, it is oral history of a particularly compelling kind. (See Abebooks - online; accessed 11.09.2023.)
Mixed Blessings: A Novel (Somerville Press 2012) - publisher’s notice: In Peter Somerville-Large"s elegant and scathingly witty novel, Paul Blake-Willoughby, the only child of a mixed marriage, is brought up on an Irish country estate by a Catholic soldier father and an eccentric Protestant mother. Against the backdrop of a large crumbling mansion, various factions, which include his Protestant teachers, a wealthy Church of Ireland Bishop and a succession of Catholic priests, war hilariously over his soul. It is a brilliant and extremely funny examination of the topics of snobbery, bigotry and infidelity. The end of the novel is a cruel surprise, reflecting a lifetime of unresolved problems.
[ top ]