Writer Polly Devlin on the influence of Ardboe the place where she grew up.
One of a family of seven children, Polly Devlin grew up in Ardboe, County Tyrone. Her brother Barry Devlin is a member of the band Horslips, and her sister Marie is married to poet Seamus Heaney.
A break in journalism came when she won an essay competition for Vogue and went to London to work as a features writer. She later moved to New York and in the 1960s she travelled the world interviewing the biggest celebrities of the era for the fashion magazine. She was a columnist for the New Statesman and wrote for the Evening Standard.
Stepping back from journalism in the 1970s, she attended film school, wrote an autobiography, 'All of Us There' and was one of the judges for the 1984 Booker Prize. ‘Dora’, her latest novel, is about a woman looking back on life.
Resident for many years in England, she is married to Andy Garnett, an engineer and philanthropist, with whom she has three children.
The exciting worlds of fashion, international travel and journalism seem like a far cry from what could appear to be an ordinary upbringing in a remote and rural area.
The family home near the western shore of Lough Neagh, combined with a nearby military aerodrome, and the societal mix that was Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s, has left her with a sense that
Everywhere I went there seemed to be a secondary or ambivalent life.
This has not diminished a profound connection to her home place. When Polly Devlin is back in Ardboe she says,
I know who I am.
This episode of ‘Hanly’s People’ was broadcast on 9 December 1990. The presenter is David Hanly.
‘Hanly’s People’ was a weekly programme featuring a guest in conversation with presenter David Hanly in a living-room setting for half an hour. Each guest was someone in the news, making the news, or behind the news. They were drawn from all spheres of public life, including politics and the arts. ‘Hanly’s People’ was first broadcast on 6 October 1986 and ended on 6 June 1991.
