Pirate queens, powerbrokers & public servants: Anne Chambers on her life as an Irish biographer |
Anne Chambers is one of Ireland’s best-known biographers. For decades, she has been meticulously preserving Ireland’s past by telling the stories of people who might otherwise have been forgotten. She’s also known for her appearances on RTÉ News and The History Show. Her most successful work is ‘Grace O’Malley: The Biography of Ireland’s Pirate Queen, 1530–1603’.
Now, with the release of her 12th book, Living Lives, Anne has decided to write her own story. It charts her long career, which has taken her from Ireland to Italy, Jamaica and the United States.
It also marks a rare moment in the spotlight for an author who usually writes about others. Launching the book, former Taoiseach Enda Kenny described her work as “extraordinary” and praised her ability to “look into the background of people’s minds”.
Living Lives tells Anne’s story, but also reflects her work documenting the lives of others, and the contribution she has made to how Ireland records and remembers its past. Here, she looks back…
AFTER A CAREER in biography spanning over 40 years, perhaps I could be accused of living my own mundane life through the more exciting lives of my ten subjects. Pirate, prince, patriot, prima donna, playboy planter-emancipator to forgotten survivors of conquest, each of my subjects have brought me on eventful journeys through epochs, cultures and countries.
While other branches of literature can be undertaken from the comfort of one’s home place biography, which has taken me from Westport to the West Indies and many countries in between, requires much time, travel and research before one can start to write.
It has been said that a biographer is ‘an artist under oath’. I prefer the sobriquet of........