The Hurley Maker's Son

Patrick Deeley's train journey home to rural East Galway in autumn 1978 was a pilgrimage of grief: his giant of a father had been felled, the hurley-making workshop silenced.

From this moment, Patrick unfolds his childhood as a series of evocative moments, from the intricate workings of the timber workshop run by his father to the slow taking apart of an old tractor and the physical burial of a steam engine; from his mother’s steady work on an old Singer sewing machine to his father’s verti...