A House for Two Pounds

Oct 17, 2024 12:27 AM

Author:K. Iggulden

A richly recounted memoir of growing up in an Irish farming community in the 1940s

A love of Ireland and the Irish is what shines through this little memoir.

Growing up amongst the fields, woods and characters of a farming community near Cork, Kathleen Iggulden depicts a world that is both immediate and real, yet belongs to a now-distant past. Here is a pony and trap to church every Sunday, evenings full of fiddle, flute and song, and new shoes and clothes twice a year.

Kathleen's childhood in the 1930s involved two or three generations - her parents, her brother and sisters, as well as the daily lives of farmworkers and craftsmen, friends and relations. She beautifully chronicles rural celebrations and forgotten practicalities of country life - all painted with a sensitive touch and a freshness of observation. She saw her people as intensely polite, decent and innocent, with humour and music always ready. She saw them as poets, and poetry as the highest art.

Recounted with immense charm and wit, A House for Two Pounds is a wonderful, vivid account of a childhood on an Irish farm - and an enduring people, just on the cusp of change.

Reviews

Smith takes readers on a tour of the world's great rivers. The result is fascinating, eye-opening, sometimes alarming, and ultimately inspiring.

—— Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

A tour de force - a narrative as powerful as the rivers he documents. He is up there with Jared Diamond - a storyteller with real craft. From Herodotus musing on the Nile to the dam makers of modern China, this is their story.

—— Fred Pearce, author of When The Rivers Run Dry

This book about rivers is as fascinating as it is beautifully written

—— Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, and Upheaval

Passionate... and infectiously enthusiastic ... an eclectic journey through several millennia.

—— Victor Mallet , The Financial Times

Instructive and entertaining. Smith's prose is clear and he explains scientific concepts well.

—— The Times

A hymn to hydrology ancient and modern.

—— The Spectator

With scholarship, literary flair, and a personal touch, Smith takes the reader on a fascinating and surprising voyage of discovery. He also sounds a clarion call for all of us to invest in protecting our rivers as a means of improving our own lives.

—— Eric Jay Dolin, bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters

How can one write a world history of rivers? Laurence C. Smith triumphantly meets the challenge, fluently comparing the role of rivers in wartime, in trade, in water management, in floods and droughts, and, looking to the future, in a world of rising temperatures.

—— David Abulafia, author of The Boundless Sea

Engaging, informative, magisterial in its coverage, intimidating in the scope of its command of the material, there's no end to the good things to be said about this book.

—— Geography Realm

Absorbing. Smith is not only an excellent storyteller, he is also perhaps the world's leading scientist using satellites to unlock the secrets of the planet's rivers. His deep understanding will inspire readers to see rivers in wholly new and surprising ways.

—— Paul Bates, Professor of Hydrology, University of Bristol

Smith demonstrates compellingly and engagingly that rivers have played a key role in the development of nations and, indeed, of humankind itself.

—— Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of the Scott Centre for Polar Research, University of Cambridge

[The Garden Jungle] brings the broader picture into focus…[and] compels the reader to care about every last creepy-crawly.

—— Jane Perrone , Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

This book offers hope… the author’s humour and enthusiasm make for an inspiring read… a clear call to action…we are encouraged to get involved in saving the planet, starting outside our own back doors.

—— Nic Wilson , The Garden

Goulson is a warrior. Through this medium, he has the ability to influence and change the course our whole society takes, from individuals to politicians, economists and industrialists.

—— Annabel Downs , Garden Design Journal

Dave Goulson is an expert on everything that grows, buzzes, crawls or flies, and we would do well to take his advice when gardening.

—— Sorted

[A] fascinating book

—— Jenny Mollison , Scotsman

Gripping . . . Kate Brown's relentless, tenacious reporting shows that Chernobyl isn't the past at all. Nothing, she makes clear, can stop its radiation from seeping through all attempts to bury the truth, for a long time to come. This deftly written, impassioned, courageous book should make the world think twice about what's at stake when we unleash nuclear reactions.

—— Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

This engagingly written book reads like a cold war thriller and uncovers the devastating effects of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

—— Alison MacFarlane, Director, Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, George Washington University

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