Speaker Novelist Anne Doughty

Thank you Anne Doughty for a most interesting address to the Club on Monday 03 July about your life and writings. Renowned for her stand-alone novels that make up the Hamilton sequence she is basically an Irish historical novelist and her writings are firmly rooted in the Ireland that she sees daily drawing much of her inspiration from the culture in which she was raised. She wants to show the good things about Ulster and writes about the ordinary people like her grandparents who were blacksmiths and mill workers but all based on historical research. Her latest novel, The Blacksmith's Wife, is set in her native Armagh in 1845 and takes place during the first two years of the Great Famine in Ulster. Having visited the derelict historic manor house of Castledillon in Armagh together with a trip to the uninhabited remains of her great-grandfather's forge on Drumilly Hill she found her inspiration for the home and workplace of its main character, Sarah Hamilton.