121 days ago
A Greek holiday looms and that should allow me the mental space to write a bit more about the death of my Great Uncle David Cochrane but also a much longer piece about Operation Mincemeat, the underpants, my family’s involvement and how that also links to agent Cicero. Trust me, it is gripping stuff. Ahead of that, enjoy a newly framed piece of family history from 1862.
169 days ago
It is a pity, for Edenmoor in Co. Donegal is a fine place and has been restored well since my late father and I visited it back in the mid eighties. That was before the Good Friday agreement and as dad and I drove through the border counties from Belfast there was more than one inappropriate joke made about IRA men lurking in the shadows around the next corner.
367 days ago
The portrait below was one my father owned. On his demise I picked it up as nobody else wanted it. The writing in the top left-hand corner says that it is James Bertie, the 1st Earl of Abingdon, a man who lived from 1653-99 and was a fairly important figure in 17th century politics. But was this a genuine portrait and how did it come into our possession?
591 days ago
What you see below is not an April Fool from the Irish Times it is real. How would my ancestors from Donegal feel about the secular, Godless elites now dominating the media and Government of Ireland? I think that I know the answer to that!
1341 days ago
Last night, I discovered two more boxes still unopened since our move to the Welsh Hovel two years ago. Within them, there is an old photo of the rev David Cochrane, my great great grandfather, looking very dour and stern as one would expect of a respectable cleric from Donegal. There was also a copy of The History of the Royal Military Canal by my Grandfather Sir John Winnifrith, signed and addressed with love to me. I tried to say how interesting that is as subject but the Mrs was not entirely convinced. I shall try again tonight, it is bound to put her into a good mood before bedtime.
1366 days ago
Among those things I collected from the house of my late father in Shipston yesterday were some ancient photo albums and several boxes of family papers and documents. I have started reading but these things almost make me tearful.
1379 days ago
We moved to the Welsh Hovel 21 months ago and still we have some things in cardboard packing boxes. Not a lot but enough. But as rooms are renovated, one by one, and furniture is added, gradually those boxes can be unpacked. In a month or so I shall also be picking up more furniture from my late father’s house in Shipston including two more Victorian bookcases and so this week I have been going through those cardboard boxes.
1397 days ago
Where my DNA comes from Sinn Fein and the IRA are seen as one and the same so he is known in this household as my pal in the IRA. Certainly he is proud of its actions – he celebrates the killing of British soldiers, something his forebears took part in. But, given the timing of the arrival of my family in his home county of Donegal (the 1650s), we know not to go chat about such matters. He knows that I wear an Ulster rugby shirt and we have much else to discuss anyway. Yesterday, he called to tease me about problems with Brexit, kicking off with Dutch customs officials seizing the ham sandwiches of British lorry drivers.
2175 days ago
During the week that he was here, ShareProphets reader Bernard from the Grim North of England, c/o Donegal tried manfully to get my new wood burning stove going. It is jolly chilly at night. He failed. Over to the maestro.
2176 days ago
I have been sitting on this account of the final day of the 2018 olive harvest for some days as I am rather cross. I know the sums involved are trivial but none the less….
2600 days ago
170 years ago my Church of Ireland forebears were sitting happily at Edenmoor, a country house in Donegal with bellies full while in the fields outside the poor catholics starved. Actually Donegal got off relatively lightly with its population falling by less than 20%. In Clare or Mayo the events of the Irish famine were truly terrible. A million Irish folks died and the same number emigrated. There is little doubt that British Corn Laws and the exploitative nature of the Landlord tenant relationship added to the woes of the potato blight. We Brits & the Cochranes of Ballybofey and their ilk have a good deal to answer for.
2626 days ago
I have written many times about my Great Uncle David Cochrane who, in 1931, died falling down the mountain now named after him, opposite Delphi in Greece. He was at the time a student at Trinity College Oxford. As my father seeks to de-clutter his house a few paintings have been offered to his children and step children and feeling a stronger Cochrane link than most I took these two below.
3435 days ago
My father and step mother are on a cruise… He starts treatment, to delay not cure, on his return but pro tem they have headed off on a boat to Iceland, via the Faroe Islands and – first stop – Donegal.
The last time my father was in Donegal was with me, perhaps fifteen years ago or was it twenty, as we paid a visit to the Cochrane ancestral home in Ballybofey.
