Ken McCormack’s Derry: Heroes, Villains, Ghosts

Ken McCormack

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Book
€14.99

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Publication date: 2010

ISBN: 978-1-907535-11-6

Category: History

Type: Paperback

Price: €14.99

Ken McCormack’s Derry is a delightful collection of weird and wonderful stories of Derry and its environs, as diverse as ‘Roll Up for the Big Bang’ (the dynamiting of the cliff under the priceless Mussenden Temple at Downhill), ‘Derry’s Air-Crash Riddle’ and ‘The Beresford Ghost’. Ken McCormack is as familiar with the characters, good and bad, of his native city as if he had known them personally. His lively, conversational style creates vivid portraits of heroes, villains and ghosts.

In every society the storyteller has been cherished because of his ability to chill the blood, to brighten the dark and to shorten the road. Ken McCormack, with hundreds of stories whirling round in his head, is a modern seanchaí and his fascinating yarns have the unmistakable mark of authenticity. Haunted workhouses, lovers’ trysts, past glories, brutal murders, hasty burials – or no burials at all in the case of ‘gravediggers’ and murderers, Burke and Hare – and duels gone crazily wrong are collected in this unmatchable compendium of local lore. The result of years of research in and about the Maiden City, Ken’s stories hold us as grippingly as the glittering eye of the ancient mariner: yes, there are shipwrecks, too, and tales of Arctic exploration. Ken McCormack’s Derry is a book to read and keep and share and read again.

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About the author

Ken McCormack is a writer and broadcaster. He was educated at St Columb’s College, Queen’s University and the University of Ulster. He worked as a teacher and lecturer and later joined the BBC as a freelance current-affairs presenter and documentary-maker.

Among the programmes he has made are The Killing of Leitrim and the celebrated series Island City and North by North-west. Ken McCormack is a frequent contributor to the Belfast Telegraph and to various magazines and currently writes historical sketches for the Derry Journal. He lives in Derry.