Well-Remembered Days

Book excerpt: Eoin O'Cellaigh: writer, poet, nationalist, playwright, civil servant, commentator (non-sport) - above all a defender of the traditional values of Ireland. The 'land of saints and scholars' has produced another grand voice. A true renaissance Catholic, Eoin O'Cellaigh has witnessed nearly a century of stirring events in the history of Ireland. This is his autobiography. O'Cellaigh enthrallingly recounts the key moments in his rich life, such as his success in bringing Pope John Paul II to Ireland, or his founding of the League of the Mother of God Against Sin, which kept jazz and modern dancing out of Irish life for most of the century. The young O'Cellaigh was marked for life by his meeting with that mythical battler for Irish independence Michael Collins, for whom he once hid sausages under the bed. As he grew older he was drawn towards the important work of censorship and campaigning against sex. In the words of Frank Sinatra, he did things, 'swell.'