Cathy Kelly is one of Ireland's best-selling authors. Her first book, Woman to Woman, was published in 1997, and went straight to number 1 on the Irish Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists, and she's enjoyed many chart-toppers since in Ireland, the UK and Australia, among them Someone Like You, Always And Forever, Lessons in Heartbreak and Homecoming.
Her new book The Year That Changed Everything, is out on the 15th of February.
Film
The Post with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Oh, folks, you have to see this one. With Steven Spielberg at the helm and rushed out to counter the insanity of the Trump-era ‘fake news’ madness, this is NOT a version of The Washington Post’s famous Watergate scandal.
Instead, it’s set marginally earlier historically when leaked documents show that America’s continuing in the Vietnam War was primarily because it was politically unthinkable that the US could lose this unwinnable war. It’s not a movie for old journalists who can still remember hard type – lovingly recreated – but instead a powerful movie of our times about how governments must be held to account when they try to cover things up. Tom Hanks, who can truly play any character at this stage in his multi-faceted career, is brilliant as the go-get-‘em newspaper editor who chain smokes, swears and makes you yearn for the fun of the newsroom. Meryl Streep may look like the Iron Lady in her 1970s outfits but her hesitancy reminds you that this was forty-seven years ago, women were supposed to know their place and even the great Katherine Graham, owner of The Post, has only been given ownership due to her husband’s suicide. Spoiler alert: when she finally tells the all-male board that she will run her newspaper her way, every woman in the cinema will do power salutes. Unmissable Spielberg genius.
Music
I’m writing a new novel and have discovered something new to wallow in apart from my non-stop Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald. Caro Emerald, or The Shocking Miss Caro Emerald. A delicious modern version of a 1940s and 1950s chanteuse, with whip smart lyrics, Caro’s voice and songs bring you into dark and edgy nightclubs, where singers with curves and perfect eyeliner breathe huskily into an old silver mike and captivate the audience.
My other fascination is La Roux, the beautifully androdgynous singer with the fabulous voice and a bulletproof ability to write songs you can’t get out of your head.
Book
I’ve just finished Celeste’s Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, which is both a brilliant, page turning story and a clever illustration of how a rule-follower can fall apart when faced with a person who doesn’t believe in rules.
Play
Shamefully, haven’t been to the theatre since seeing my dear friend, Anne-Marie Casey’s wonderful adaptation of Wuthering Heights in 2014. She is such a wonderful novelist and screenwriter, and her adaptations, especially her glorious version of Little Women, are incredible.
TV
I had such high hopes for Britannia…. Druids, women with fierce eyes and brilliant skills on the crossbow but the Butterworths – who wrote it – apparently implied that it was best enjoyed when viewers were out of their heads, which is the ultimate cop-out. If you’re out of your head, staring glassily at the milk carton might be infinitely fascinating for a few hours - but it’s not entertainment. I turned off Britannia after forty minutes. I haven’t got into Game Of Thrones – I know I need to invest the time but just don’t seem to have it.So I’m casting around wildly between The Tunnel and old Modern Family episodes. Really, the writing is so sharp and the actors are marvelous. They all turn on a dime.
Gig
The last gig I went to was Adele’s, which was epic. When my husband ran Sony Music Ireland, we went to gigs non-stop and while I love the raw energy of standing off stage and listening to the power of the music, I love discovering new music for myself at home and listening on surround sound -.I would now have to be anaesthesised to go to a music festival.
Art
I am a huge art fan and never leave a city without seeing as many exhibitions as I can. Last year, we went to Sicily to see the glorious temples but being ill meant I saw nothing but the airport. The last formal exhibition I went to was the National Gallery’s Vermeer. Ireland is blessed with art galleries and stunning artists. We went to the Georgia O’Keefe in the Tate last year, and I had to be dragged out.
Radio/Podcast
I like the Albright Institute for Global Affairs which covers everything from addressing the world’s tragic refugee crisis to gender equality. I am a mad podcast fan. I also like Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time podcasts where the and two or three experts discuss such esoteric subjects as paganism in Europe to the work of scientists in the last century. Listen to the one of Alexander Fleming and the discover of penicillin. Amazing.
The RTÉ podcasts are a glorious source of information too and I loved the Documentary On One presentation Songs My Mother Taught Me, about women who married Allied servicemen during WW2. Fascinating.
Tech
I currently – this could change – like Any-Do which helps you list tasks. Mind you, you have to actually accomplish some things on the list or it squeaks at you in the morning.
The Next Big Thing
Sabrina Pasterski, a twenty-four-year-old Chicagoan physicist who studies high energy physics, has Stephen Hawking follow her on Twitter, got the highest grade possible at MIT and was called the next Einstein at Harvard. She’s first generation Cuban, fights fiercely for girls to do STEM subjects, built and flew her own plane at fourteen, and worked on the Cern Hadron Collider. She is inspirational.
Cathy Kelly's The Year That Changed Everything is out on February 15th
