A Date with an Agent

I spent the weekend at the International Festival of Literature in Dublin. This took place in a large marquee in Merrion Square Park, a verdant space in the heart of Georgian Dublin. It had been the private garden of the well-heeled residents of the square, among whom were Oscar Wilde and WB Yeats. The Insider’s Guide to Publishing, for as yet unpublished novelists, was an all-day event hosted by the dynamic Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, novelist, agent, founder of Writing.ie and Chair of the Society of Authors. It consisted of a very informative series of panels with top literary agents, leading editors and debut authors, all of whom shared their insight and invaluable tips on how to navigate the complex world of fiction publishing. But, despite all of this, the main draw for me was my ‘Date with an Agent’. Several months previously I had sent the opening of my novel, the synopsis and my bio into the competition run by Writing.ie, along with 500 other aspiring novelists. Amazingly I was one of those selected to meet an agent. I was very nervous, for I’d never met a literary agent before. I’d only received rejections from them. I waited outside the small office space that had been created for the meetings and went over my notes again. Then the curtain was opened and I was ushered in.

The date began well. The agent quickly put me at my ease. We spoke about my writing career and moved on to discuss my novel. Time seemed to pass extremely quickly. Then she told me she’d like to see my full manuscript. I left with a beaming smile on my face. In fact, it’s still here.

VE Day

My father spent VE Day, 8 May 1945, in Brussels. He had walked there, alongside thousands of refugees, after being liberated from his POW camp in the Black Forest by the US Third Army. He remembered General Patton standing on a jeep, with two ivory-handled revolvers at his waist, giving the prisoners a speech. Afterwards they were given plenty of food by the Americans. Many of the prisoners were sick after wolfing it down. They had been living on thin soup and scraps of bread for many months. My father had been a POW since 1942. He’d been captured at the battle of El Alamein in North Africa and had then been incarcerated at other camps in Italy and Germany. After liberation, he set off for home with only an old blanket for a coat. He lived like a refugee, sleeping under trees at the roadside, until he reached Brussels. He described VE day as completely wild. The city centre was crammed with people celebrating madly. To cross the street he had to walk over the bonnets of cars. After Brussels he got some army transport back to England. My father was the third eldest of nine children. His father had been badly wounded in the First World War and could only do light work. He became a village milkman, delivering milk from a horse and cart. Customers brought their pail and this was filled with milk from one of the churns that were carried on the cart. Like the other children, my father left school at 14 to earn money to support the family. He got a job as a draper’s assistant, delivering orders to customers by bicycle. He hated it and ran away to join the army when he was 15. He told them he was 16, the minimum age to enlist, but he always sent his army pay home to his mother. After basic training on horses, my father was posted to Cairo. There he joined a unit that patrolled the Western Sahara in armoured cars and made maps. In the late 1930’s there was a clear sense that the world was building up to a war.

With the rise of neo-fascism and dictatorships, many commentators are drawing parallels between the late 1930’s and the present day. The similarities are indeed too great to ignore. But let us hope against hope that wisdom prevails and we do not again descend into those dark days of widespread war. Like many brave men and women who fought in the Second World War, my father would be turning in his grave at the thought of it.