In Kiltumper: A celebration of a serene haven under constant threat

Niall Williams and Christine Breen’s beguiling tale of the garden they constructed in their Co Clare cottage is clouded by personal setbacks and the looming spectre of a nearby wind farm

Niall Williams has authored ten successful novels before co-writing this memoir. Picture: John Kelly

MEMOIR

In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden

By Niall Williams and Christine Breen

Bloomsbury, €24.99

I always regarded John Butler Yeats’s warning to his teenage sons, William and Jack, as the worst piece of career advice ever given – yet in other ways the best. “A steady job,” he told them, “has been the ruin of many a good man.”

Yeats sr died in New York in 1922. Perhaps something of his eccentricity ...