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A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age
Celebrated TV critic John Doyle has penned an Irish memoir that gives a portrait of a boy and his country transformed by television. Funny, insightful, and engaging, A Great Feast of Light begins in the small town of Nenagh, where young John's father purchased the family's first television in 1962, and ends in 1979 with the Pope's historic visit to the Emerald Isle, the appearance of "Dallas" on Irish TV, and twenty-two-year-old John's escape to North America. By day, John was schooled by the Christian brothers in the valor of Irish rebel heroes and the saintliness of Catholic martyrs. But in the evenings, television conveyed more subversive messages: American westerns, "I Love Lucy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Laugh-In, The Muppet Show, Starsky and Hutch, and Monty Python suggested ways of life that were exciting and free. News coverage of American civil rights and women's rights protests, Irish street riots, bombings, and Bloody Sunday clashed with Catholic conservatism. While the "global village" was yanking Ireland out of its past, one intelligent and sardonic boy was taking notes. His story, at once a charming coming-of-age tale and a compelling social history, is a welcome addition to the literature of Ireland.
321 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
3 people are currently reading
82 people want to read
About the author
John Doyle
4 books20 followersTelevision Critic, Soccer coverage, at the The Globe and Mail, Canada
Writer fella.
Books: The World Is A Ball: The Joy, Madness & Meaning of Soccer published May 2010. National Bestseller, Canada.
Also published, United Kingdom, Rep. of Ireland, Croatia.
And Published in the U.S. by Rodale.
A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age, published 2005, Doubleday Canada. And a bunch of other countries...big-time popular too.
Writer fella.
Books: The World Is A Ball: The Joy, Madness & Meaning of Soccer published May 2010. National Bestseller, Canada.
Also published, United Kingdom, Rep. of Ireland, Croatia.
And Published in the U.S. by Rodale.
A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age, published 2005, Doubleday Canada. And a bunch of other countries...big-time popular too.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 19, 2011
I always have great hopes and butterflies in my stomach when I find an Irish writer. Swayed by the $2 price tag (Borders going under sale) and the Malachy McCourt blurb on the cover I snapped it up. Malachy said he laughed "hysterically", and I thought that would cinch the deal for me - although it didn't make it sweet enough for me - barely raised a chuckle thoughout, but I did learn things - so it wasn't a complete loss.
John Doyle is a television critic born in Ireland though he emigrated to Canada after university (UCD), so I've never come across his work before & didn't know what to expect. He frames his life growing up in Ireland around the advent of television and how television changed Ireland and himself in the process. There's history as he learns it - the book starts off when his father brings home a television, and the tone of the narrative or voice is somewhere between a child and himself now looking back and the tone gets more diffuse as the years roll on. I tried to bond with it, but in the end I couldn't connect to the John Doyle of now. I pretty much lost who John Doyle became - I found more ties to the younger Doyle and to Ireland and to certain aspects of Irish Catholicism and conservatism that were embedded in Australia at that same time.
Be that as it may, he gives a fairly o.k. rendition of the way television changed Ireland's society and how it affected him, his family and friends. It's not a critical analysis but one that everyday people can understand. I think it's a stretch to say it was the main reason change happened in Ireland, the world was changing everywhere, they would have eventually heard about it even without television - eventually. But as in Australia, television was definitely a moving force for the people to "see" change in other countries and thus demand it in their own. Books banned in Ireland in the 50's & 60's were banned here too.
Some of the Irish history he talks about I particularly connected with, where he wondered while watching the Man from U.N.C.L.E what Irish rebels like Patrick Sarsfield, (from James II's time) would do in certain situations on the show. Although that may sound strange to some an uncle of mine born in Ireland would be constantly saying similar thoughts when we were all watching tv. The Irish past always seemed to be ever present. That kind of thought process rubbed off on me too.
I only recently discovered that two of my Irish ancestor aunts came to Australia originally from Cavan - which was one of the areas hardest hit by the 1840's famine, and my research was a bit stalled. Doyle and his family moved from Nenagh to Carrick-on-Shannon, near Cavan and the Leitrim hills. So hearing about Cavan was eye-opening to me. There as a young boy he hears about the wailing on the roads, and ghosts in the area. He writes an eerie and moving account of Carrick during the famine that really hit home to me one that no other account had done nor made me so profoundly sad. The population was around 66,000, including Cavan and the Leitrim hill country. They flooded into Carrick to the workhouse (poorhouse) for food and help. Carrick being a tiny village, the workhouse held but a few hundred, the rest were locked out having already been thrown off their land. For 3 years the streets, lanes and ditches around Carrick were filled with the dead and wandering dying and that the English refused to help. The countryside around is still apparently desolate and lonely & some still hear the wailing.
My research about my aunts (actually, great, great, great aunts), told me they were sent here for theft. (minor articles; a scarf, shoes, and fruit). They apparently were caught a couple of times before being transported. I discovered that it was mostly young people transported from Cavan at that time, and I suspect it was because they were young and strong enough to attempt to go looking for food or clothing to steal. AND they stole on purpose, to get arrested so that they would get sent to Australia, so that they could survive. They had heard there was food and warmth down here. Most other accounts tell of the Irish being afraid of being sent here, but when you actually look at the alternative - death from starvation in a Carrick ditch, you realise it was pretty much their last chance at life. You realise that in a lot of cases transportation down under wasn't the dreadful thing it's been made out to be.
Doyles' account mentions that many famine victims in Carrick were wearing rags - their clothes traded for food or fallen apart and of course, imagine being thrown out of your home in what you are wearing and living rough in the fields for 3 years. This kind of information just doesn't get taught at school in Australia, was never taught when I was at school and the years before when having a convict ancestor was shameful, certainly none of this was ever taught. Yet my uncle constantly referred to it with added expletives about the English, the past was ever present for him. Thankfully times have changed - or have they? The Irish and their descendants are all over the globe, having left for so many reasons...and so many of those that have left have written about Ireland. It seems maybe the past is still present.
Does it get embedded in the genes? I've never been there but I get angry about things that have happened there and wonder what if?
Perhaps Doyle is right about other things, that television had more of an effect that we think, but the Pope still bans contraceptives - they are however now available in Ireland, and Northern Ireland is still - well - Northern Ireland. Perhaps both Doyle and my uncle were right about the Leitrim Hills having a stash of guns buried there from the first Uprising - maybe we will find that out one day. I can't say that Doyle's book was that funny but others might find his thoughts on some of the 60's tv shows hilarious. While Doyle talked a lot about The Troubles as he experienced them and saw on television, I was slightly disappointed there was not more detail - although there are other books about with that information. In the early 70's my school & the Brigidine Nuns were heavily invested in helping Irish Catholic families from Northern Ireland find sponsors & billets in Australia. There were endless fetes and charity events to raise money for their trip here. Doyle doesn't mention anything about Catholics leaving Northern Ireland at all.But then maybe it was all a bit hush hush. I don't know.
I'm thankful I found out about Cavan and Carrick-on-Shannon and the wailing ghosts. His book goes some way to explain and enlighten me on my family and how I think and for that I am glad I read it.
**********************************************************************************************************-bought today $2 in the last Borders sale.
John Doyle is a television critic born in Ireland though he emigrated to Canada after university (UCD), so I've never come across his work before & didn't know what to expect. He frames his life growing up in Ireland around the advent of television and how television changed Ireland and himself in the process. There's history as he learns it - the book starts off when his father brings home a television, and the tone of the narrative or voice is somewhere between a child and himself now looking back and the tone gets more diffuse as the years roll on. I tried to bond with it, but in the end I couldn't connect to the John Doyle of now. I pretty much lost who John Doyle became - I found more ties to the younger Doyle and to Ireland and to certain aspects of Irish Catholicism and conservatism that were embedded in Australia at that same time.
Be that as it may, he gives a fairly o.k. rendition of the way television changed Ireland's society and how it affected him, his family and friends. It's not a critical analysis but one that everyday people can understand. I think it's a stretch to say it was the main reason change happened in Ireland, the world was changing everywhere, they would have eventually heard about it even without television - eventually. But as in Australia, television was definitely a moving force for the people to "see" change in other countries and thus demand it in their own. Books banned in Ireland in the 50's & 60's were banned here too.
Some of the Irish history he talks about I particularly connected with, where he wondered while watching the Man from U.N.C.L.E what Irish rebels like Patrick Sarsfield, (from James II's time) would do in certain situations on the show. Although that may sound strange to some an uncle of mine born in Ireland would be constantly saying similar thoughts when we were all watching tv. The Irish past always seemed to be ever present. That kind of thought process rubbed off on me too.
I only recently discovered that two of my Irish ancestor aunts came to Australia originally from Cavan - which was one of the areas hardest hit by the 1840's famine, and my research was a bit stalled. Doyle and his family moved from Nenagh to Carrick-on-Shannon, near Cavan and the Leitrim hills. So hearing about Cavan was eye-opening to me. There as a young boy he hears about the wailing on the roads, and ghosts in the area. He writes an eerie and moving account of Carrick during the famine that really hit home to me one that no other account had done nor made me so profoundly sad. The population was around 66,000, including Cavan and the Leitrim hill country. They flooded into Carrick to the workhouse (poorhouse) for food and help. Carrick being a tiny village, the workhouse held but a few hundred, the rest were locked out having already been thrown off their land. For 3 years the streets, lanes and ditches around Carrick were filled with the dead and wandering dying and that the English refused to help. The countryside around is still apparently desolate and lonely & some still hear the wailing.
My research about my aunts (actually, great, great, great aunts), told me they were sent here for theft. (minor articles; a scarf, shoes, and fruit). They apparently were caught a couple of times before being transported. I discovered that it was mostly young people transported from Cavan at that time, and I suspect it was because they were young and strong enough to attempt to go looking for food or clothing to steal. AND they stole on purpose, to get arrested so that they would get sent to Australia, so that they could survive. They had heard there was food and warmth down here. Most other accounts tell of the Irish being afraid of being sent here, but when you actually look at the alternative - death from starvation in a Carrick ditch, you realise it was pretty much their last chance at life. You realise that in a lot of cases transportation down under wasn't the dreadful thing it's been made out to be.
Doyles' account mentions that many famine victims in Carrick were wearing rags - their clothes traded for food or fallen apart and of course, imagine being thrown out of your home in what you are wearing and living rough in the fields for 3 years. This kind of information just doesn't get taught at school in Australia, was never taught when I was at school and the years before when having a convict ancestor was shameful, certainly none of this was ever taught. Yet my uncle constantly referred to it with added expletives about the English, the past was ever present for him. Thankfully times have changed - or have they? The Irish and their descendants are all over the globe, having left for so many reasons...and so many of those that have left have written about Ireland. It seems maybe the past is still present.
Does it get embedded in the genes? I've never been there but I get angry about things that have happened there and wonder what if?
Perhaps Doyle is right about other things, that television had more of an effect that we think, but the Pope still bans contraceptives - they are however now available in Ireland, and Northern Ireland is still - well - Northern Ireland. Perhaps both Doyle and my uncle were right about the Leitrim Hills having a stash of guns buried there from the first Uprising - maybe we will find that out one day. I can't say that Doyle's book was that funny but others might find his thoughts on some of the 60's tv shows hilarious. While Doyle talked a lot about The Troubles as he experienced them and saw on television, I was slightly disappointed there was not more detail - although there are other books about with that information. In the early 70's my school & the Brigidine Nuns were heavily invested in helping Irish Catholic families from Northern Ireland find sponsors & billets in Australia. There were endless fetes and charity events to raise money for their trip here. Doyle doesn't mention anything about Catholics leaving Northern Ireland at all.But then maybe it was all a bit hush hush. I don't know.
I'm thankful I found out about Cavan and Carrick-on-Shannon and the wailing ghosts. His book goes some way to explain and enlighten me on my family and how I think and for that I am glad I read it.
**********************************************************************************************************-bought today $2 in the last Borders sale.
February 4, 2015
I read John Doyle every day in The Globe and Mail. He is caustically sharp about every aspect of television: the programs, the studios, the selling of TV. I was looking forward to this book, even though I wasn't sure exactly what it would be about.
It was so much more than a treatise on the state of television in Ireland, thank goodness. His recounting of significant moments in Irish history (I dare you to read without rage his recounting of the horrors of the famine in Carrick) and his eye-witness experience of the Troubles added much more to the book, not to mention his ascetic comments on the social backwardness of Roman Catholic oppression in Ireland right up until he left it in 1980, all made for a very interesting read. I liked this book a lot.
It was so much more than a treatise on the state of television in Ireland, thank goodness. His recounting of significant moments in Irish history (I dare you to read without rage his recounting of the horrors of the famine in Carrick) and his eye-witness experience of the Troubles added much more to the book, not to mention his ascetic comments on the social backwardness of Roman Catholic oppression in Ireland right up until he left it in 1980, all made for a very interesting read. I liked this book a lot.
January 26, 2009
i really liked getting a perspective on television - America, Irish, and British - from a point of view i am not very accustomed to. doyle skillfully weaves the story of him and his family with insights into irish history and culture and thoughtful analysis of television and the role it played in the country, as well as his growing up.
September 9, 2021
Having lived in Dublin, albeit the south side as opposed to John Doyle's north side, and having also studied English, Philosophy and History in UCD at around the same time, I can attest to the veracity of this memoir of growing up in Ireland as television began to change the social dynamic. There is much to admire in this memoir which I picked up without any knowledge of the author's status in Canada; but I will emphasise three features I enjoyed.
1: John Doyle has a very fine sense of social class as it operates in different areas of Ireland. The differing class structures in Nenagh, where he was born, Carrick-on-Shannon, where he spend some of his youth, Enniskillen, where he had one fateful visit, brilliantly described, and Dublin, where he spent his teenage years, are skilfully evoked. He has a clear understanding of snobbery, disdain, one-upmanship and political and social pretension not only as it applies to adults, but, also, as it percolates down to school children.
2: It is good to be reminded of the linguistic extravaganza of slang, particularly schoolboy slang. Some of the best passages of the book are those that bring forth the manner in which people of the time spoke and, through their speaking, displayed their social credentials or social pretensions.
3: The power of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the manner in which television altered that power, is very cleverly delineated. The concluding chapters, describing the first ever papal visit to Ireland, observed on tv by the author who refused to be caught up in the mass benediction of the time, are among the best in the book. His own disdain for clerical intrusions, held in check for most of the book, finally burst out in a sardonic account of papal sway. And the effect is exhilarating.
In the end, the decision to leave Ireland and move to Canada is dealt with in two pages. That is another story; but the one told here, of a changing Ireland, seen from a youthful perspective, is a stimulating read.
1: John Doyle has a very fine sense of social class as it operates in different areas of Ireland. The differing class structures in Nenagh, where he was born, Carrick-on-Shannon, where he spend some of his youth, Enniskillen, where he had one fateful visit, brilliantly described, and Dublin, where he spent his teenage years, are skilfully evoked. He has a clear understanding of snobbery, disdain, one-upmanship and political and social pretension not only as it applies to adults, but, also, as it percolates down to school children.
2: It is good to be reminded of the linguistic extravaganza of slang, particularly schoolboy slang. Some of the best passages of the book are those that bring forth the manner in which people of the time spoke and, through their speaking, displayed their social credentials or social pretensions.
3: The power of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the manner in which television altered that power, is very cleverly delineated. The concluding chapters, describing the first ever papal visit to Ireland, observed on tv by the author who refused to be caught up in the mass benediction of the time, are among the best in the book. His own disdain for clerical intrusions, held in check for most of the book, finally burst out in a sardonic account of papal sway. And the effect is exhilarating.
In the end, the decision to leave Ireland and move to Canada is dealt with in two pages. That is another story; but the one told here, of a changing Ireland, seen from a youthful perspective, is a stimulating read.
March 27, 2012
With John Doyle being a well known film critic in Canada (Globe & Mail) and being a fellow Dubliner he wrote this out it was a no brainer to buy a copy. It is very good and while some of the nicer point of being raised in Ireland are insider-jokes it is so well written that there is no prerequisite to be a fellow Irish exile. His vocabulary is impressive and his cleverness is visible throughout the book. Anyone who can take on Fox Network in a debate and its pariahs and make them look silly must be clever! Well on second thoughts any with a brain could do that. Anyway this is a fun read and the period of the radio dominated pre-TV days in Ireland are so insightful for that issue alone its worth the effort to get your hands on this. Thanks John!
October 4, 2019
This is a thoroughly enjoyable read combining Irish family life, the invention and "invasion" of the television (and therefore television media) into the lives of Irish families, and some political and social history of Ireland. There were certainly some aspects of conflicts between the British and the Irish that I understand more completely after reading this book, but the role that television media played in shaping some of the cities and towns in both Northern Ireland and the Republic was equally enlightening. I found the book well-written despite someone having felt the need to correct every accent/pronunciation s/he felt the author missed or used incorrectly (I borrowed the book from the library... and as a side note I disagreed on several occasions with the red-pen-toting after market editor...). I will certainly recommend this book to my uncle, and anyone else with a fascination with Irish culture and history.
May 16, 2017
This is another book that I have had for ten or twelve years, but have just read. Doyle is just a bit younger than I am, and he watched some of the same TV shows as I did, but his experience of TV was different because of living in Ireland. He grew up at challenging times in that country, but got out as soon as he could. This is a nice, gentle memoir of an increasingly violent Ireland.
January 24, 2023
Takes you to the 60's and 70's in southern Ireland, and provides insight into the cultural landscape and violence of those times. Fascinating to read the early impact of television, and specifically its impact on John Doyle who is currently the TV critic for the Globe and Mail.
November 23, 2018
Wonderful. Charming and acerbic. Highly recommended.
June 23, 2021
John Doyle is always an interesting read.
November 7, 2022
Welcome antidote to the lazy idea that TV is bad for you. Also a stunning look at how a theocracy functions on a day to day basis.
February 21, 2022
I enjoyed this book. In particular, I appreciated how john Doyle effectively drew a line connecting the emerging of television in Ireland, the English oppression over the centuries, the poorly-named "Troubles" and the role and politics of the Catholic church in Ireland.
August 5, 2007
For those of us who knew John Doyle only as an irreverent and mischevious television critic for the Globe and Mail in Toronto, this autobiography of his formative years goes a long way to explaining the wickedly cheeky (and occasionally angry and very often dead-on) commentary he provides on the world as glimpsed through the strange prism of the idiot box. Doyle is smart, funny, outraged, brilliant with character and wonderfully evocative of Irish life in the 1960s and 1970s, when the country was beset by poverty, religious strife, arch class consciousness, and an economy that seemed to be going only downhill. Affectionate without being sentimental, it reads effortlessly. Doyle is said to be working on a book about international football (soccer to North Americans) and I can't wait for his idiosyncratic take.
June 17, 2016
Some of this book was interesting but since I am not a sports person I had to skip over the blather about sports.I found it almost painful to read the sections about how the boys perceived girls and relationships.I think culturally the sexist attitudes and elitist catholic church are more abhorrent than Ireland's troubled times and probably contributed to this very dysfunctional society.
March 29, 2009
Interesting premise of writing a memoir through the offerings of the first generation of television in Ireland. Does a good job of showing the transition from an almost entirely Catholic state to a much more secular nation.
October 4, 2024
Truly a hidden gem. A Canadian modern classic and one of my faves. An endearing memoir and a look back on the development of technology we now can't imagine our lives without, but it's still fairly new, in the grand scheme of things.
May 30, 2013
Excellent book. If you love Ireland, read it.
June 24, 2013
Exceptionally well-written and entertaining.
October 9, 2016
Very enjoyable, especially if you grew up in Ireland in the 70's
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January 5, 2017wonderfully describes the Irish terrain of life with the usual bit of English repression, Irish patriotism ..the tragedy of northern ireland...and how Tv played a part in it all. A wonderful book.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews