"I remember very clearly where I was on Christmas Eve, 2012, when my brother Seamus got a phone call conveying bad news about our brother, Dennis O'Driscoll. I was listening to a documentary on Radio 4 about Enid Blyton's 'Faraway Tree' series, at the garden centre Seamus and I have run for many years.
Dennis had once written to Enid Blyton, as he recounts in the essay he wrote about growing up in Thurles, called 'Circling The Square'. "I had stuck with Enid Blyton the whole way from Noddy to The Famous Five", he wrote. "I dared interrupt the author's prodigious flow with a fan letter, to which she responded in neat blue biro and characteristically excitable style: 'Thank you for your well-written letter . . . Perhaps one day you will write a book - what a thrill that would be for you - and how proud you would feel when you saw your very own book in the public library'"
How perceptive she was."
