Irish beginnings

The Irish Celtic twilight and the New Zealand Canterbury nor’wester have been the dominant influences in author Coral Atkinson’s life. She was born in Ireland in 1947, the younger of two daughters. Her family was Protestant, and staunchly pro-British, at a time when Ireland was militantly republican and Catholic.

My people belonged to the past, they were Anglo Irish, the leftovers from a time when the English ruled Ireland; theirs were other ways of thinking and being.  We existed in a psychological ghetto of shabby gentility; we were sent to antiquated little private schools and brought up for a world that had disappeared with Ireland’s independence, some thirty years before.

View of 13 Palmerston Road,
Rathmines, Dublin. This is where
Coral spent her first six years.

This flowering cherry tree was in
the front garden. It has now been removed.