Gaps of Brightness - a memoir, Patricia Boylan

New paperback first edition.
'I thought that the Abbey School of Acting would open up a new and wonderful world to me if only it would admit me as a student. As it happens, I was right. It did...

I was learning that life is full of alternatives. The choice was open and one could, if one wanted to, put an individual imprint on every little detail of life.'

From her idyllic childhood in Coalisland and Dungannon as one of a family of twelve, to training as a nurse in Leeds, to the Abbey School of Acting in the days of Yeats and Lennox Robinson, to the studios of Radio Éireann, Patricia Boylan has led a quietly extraordinary life.

Her distinctive voice reading 'The Three Cornered Field', a poem by Fred Higgins, attracted an admirer who became her husband. For over twenty years she read on Austin Clarke's weekly poetry programme on Radio Éireann, and carried on a parallel career in journalism, while raising four children.

Patricia Boylan relates the story of her childhood, youth and middle age with wit, spirit and a love of life.

Patricia Boylan, author of All Cultivated People: A History of the United Arts Club.