With a Foreword by Eilish O Carroll, who plays Winnie in Mrs. Brown's Boys, Seán Keane is one of three stars featured in a brand new book, eponymously titled, about the parish of Caherlistrane.
Written by Mary J Murphy, it's fifty-plus townlands are tucked neatly into 56 square miles in north County Galway, and Eilish is involved because her journalist-grandfather, Michael McHugh, was born in one of those townlands, Raheen, in 1873. That means that the very roots of the global TV phenomenon that is Mrs Brown's Boys are buried way down deep in Caherlistrane soil.
McHugh, as well as being in the 'inner circle' of Michael Collins' spy network around Dublin Castle c 1920, is also a documented combatant in Dublin during Easter Week, and he was the father of politician, Maureen O'Carroll.She, the mother of both Eilish and Brendan O Carroll, was the first female Labour TD elected in Ireland, in Dublin North Central, in 1954.
Seán Keane is one of Ireland's most gifted and talented singers, the brother of Dolores and the nephew of the famous Sarah & Rita Keane. Quite remarkably , Seán has written a solo show (called 'Granny's Suitcase'), as has Eilish (hers is 'Live, Love, Laugh'), and as has the third star with Caherlistrane connections featured in the book, the US actor Ms Vivian Nesbitt. She has been in the TV show, 'Breaking Bad', and has written the New York award-winning play, 'The Bark and The Tree', based on her gt gt grandmother's life, who lived in Caherlistrane in the mid 19th century. That woman was the famous poet of the Young Ireland movement, Eva of The Nation.
The book, CAHERLISTRANE, is available online from both Charlie Byrnes and Kennys book shops in Galway, Ireland.
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