Interview with a poet: Richard Murphy, an old Spectator hand
Richard Murphy was born in County Mayo in Ireland in 1927. He spent part of his childhood in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where his father was the last British mayor of Colombo. From the age of eight he attended boarding schools in Ireland and England, eventually winning a scholarship to Oxford. In 1959 Murphy moved to Inishbofin, an island off the coast of Connemara in County Galway. He settled there for twenty years, writing poems inspired by tragic tales from the local fishing community. These include ‘The Cleggan Disaster’, ‘The Last Galway Hooker’, ‘Pat Cloherty’s Version of The Maisie’ and ‘Sailing to an Island’. The latter describes a dangerous boating