Leaving Dublin: Writing My Way from Ireland to Canada

Writing My Way from Ireland to Canada

“Brian Brennan’s memories of his childhood in Dublin, before heading off to seek a new life for himself in Canada, are amusing, charming, and filled with loving warmth. This is the Dublin and the Ireland that I remember, too, not at all like the place of misery depicted in Angela’s Ashes. A most enjoyable read!” —Dermot Desmond, Irish businessman and financier, Chairman of International Investment and Underwriting

“Brennan modestly says this is ‘the story of an ordinary immigrant from Ireland’, though I must disagree. It is a tale of a remarkable life in Ireland and Canada told with flair and extraordinary skill. Brennan takes the reader on a journey that is both poignant and humorous and spans six decades. You’ll not be disappointed if you go along for the ride. Don’t take my word for it. Read the book.” —Patrick Taylor, New York Times and Globe and Mail best-selling novelist

Leaving Dublin: Writing My Way from Ireland to Canada is an engaging and entertaining exploration of a man’s life that begins in middle-class Dublin, includes stints as a travelling musician and broadcaster in Canada, and culminates in a career as an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. With passion, candour, humour and vivid stories, Brian Brennan tells how he left a soul-destroying job in the Irish civil service to seek new opportunities in a country where he had no friends and no family connections. He offers revealing glimpses of suburban life in the postwar Ireland of the 1950s, the commercial music scene in Canada during the 1960s, and the commercial radio and newspaper scene during the last third of the 20th century, when journalism went from being a business with a conscience and a higher purpose to an enterprise owned by large corporations that care more about private profit than public debate.