Arthur Magennis

Living in the Past: a Northern Irish Memoir Arthur Magennis

When Arthur Magennis was put on chemotherapy in 2012, he found that he had two sleepless nights each week. To fill the dark hours, he began to write the story of his childhood in Northern Ireland in the 1920s and 30s, through WWII and up to leaving his home to work in England as a pharmacist in the early 1950s. His wife and daughters had asked him to do this many times before, having heard the stories often over the years. His book is a fascinating and amusing insight into a lost way of life in a poor farming community, where the main mode of transport was the bicycle and, as such, when a weekly bus was introduced to the area the excitement was immense. It features an interesting cast of neighbours and local characters, each with their own individual views on life.