Going back to his roots: one man’s odyssey of linguistic rediscovery

Memoir: Coming Home: One Man’s Return to the Irish Language, By Michael McCaughan, Gill Books, €15

Irish road signage in Connemara: Michael McCaughan’s new book explores our relationship with the native tongue Pic: Getty

Michael McCaughan used to have no time for the Irish language. Attending what he calls a “west British” school in south Dublin, he found that Thin Lizzy and the Clash said rather more to him about his life than Peig Sayers. Gaeilge in the 1970s was associated with “Republican orthodoxy and conservative Catholicism, some hybrid of diddly- aye, The Men Behind The Wire and ceilis at the crossroads under the supervision of a ...