Kit de Waal: ‘My Irish mother was rejected by my grandmother for having a baby with a black man'
'She invited the woman in and the woman never really left' de Waal tells Roisin Ingle, on the latest episode of The Women's Podcast. She says religion gave her mother, who had undiagnosed mental health issues, an opportunity for redemption. 'My mother was rejected by my grandmother for having a baby with a black man … she felt herself in disgrace.'
The Jehovah's Witness religion was a fresh start, a chance for 'forgiveness' de Waal explains. For the author and her four siblings, growing up with the religion was to have far reaching consequences. De Waal, now a successful author, hated books and reading as a child because she was forced to read the bible. She only read for pleasure for the first time in her twenties.
De Waal and her siblings also believed, as preached by the Jehovah's Witness, that the world was going to end in 1975, this Armageddon prophecy meant in that year 'God was going to kill everyone who wasn't in the religion … and then Jehovah's Witnesses [would] proceed to make the earth a paradise'.
READ MORE
Throughout her childhood, de Waal firmly believed she would die as a fifteen-year-old and never get to turn 16. 'We all thought we would die … because only good Jehovah's Witnesses survived'. De Waal did not believe she was 'good'. She liked boys, she swore, smoked and stole money from her dad's trouser pocket. The religious-based sense of impending doom meant she never tried at school, thinking 'what's the point? I'm going to die.'
She explored all of this in her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes. Writing it increased her compassion for her parents 'for them coming to England as immigrants being poor, not knowing the world, trying so hard to assimilate … I dedicated the book to them'.
De Waal went on to develop an intense passion for literature and carved out a career in law which began without any formal training. It was only in her early forties that she decided to try writing. After many years of 'writing shite' and being sacked by her agent her debut My Name Is Leon, about a summer in the life of a 9-year-old mixed race boy, was eventually published to huge acclaim. 'I wrote it from the heart about a world I knew intimately … it came from the guts of me,' she says.
Her beautiful and moving new novel, The Best of Everything, returns to the theme of belonging and also explores grief, infidelity, race, kindness and caring. She is currently writing a sequel to My Name Is Leon.
Having become a first time novelist at the age of 56, De Waal who also works as a creative writing teacher, is an advocate for women making big moves in middle age. 'We aren't living in the 1960s where you got to 50 and you got out the beige polyester trousers with an elasticated waist, by the way there's nothing wrong with an elasticated waist. We live in a different world, we are allowed to have a third age, a second wind … it's never too late'.
You can listen back to this episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Living next door to a Belfast peace wall: ‘You feel safer with it up'
For the first time in more than 50 years, Jean Canavan walks the stretch of road under an enormous wall at the back of her Belfast home. Her sister, Patsy, is by her side when they turn a corner on to Cupar Way in the west of the city. This is the 'Protestant side' of the so-called peace wall separating the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankill Road. It is July and the height of marching season. To their left, a digger is on site at Lanark Way where an Eleventh Night bonfire was once lit. Jean Canavan (71) touches a miraculous medal around her neck. 'I'll just hide my medal. You would have got into trouble when you were young with this on round here,' she says laughing, before tucking it away. READ MORE Patsy (right) and Jean Canavan pictured by the Peace Wall on the Cupar Way side, the Loyalist side of the wall, behind their homes in Bombay Street. Photo: Bryan O'Brien Red double decker buses packed with tourists whizz past and there is a constant stream of black taxis pulling up. Passengers armed with markers jump out to sign the wall. Reading the messages written there, Patsy Canavan (69) shakes her head in disbelief. Freshly painted flags representing the US, Brazil, Canada and Australia are visible at the far end of the wall covered in writing. Jean (left) and Patsy Canavan in Bombay Street in the Falls Road area. The sisters both live close to the peace wall that divides the predominantly Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien ''Most people want to live in peace and freedom' ... 'love from Washington'. They're from everywhere,' says Patsy. 'To be honest, this is the first time we've walked round here, ever. And it's only because there's four of us (nodding to The Irish Times). We've gone past it in a car. 'I'm fascinated by this wall – and the names on it.' [ John Hume's life provides lessons for addressing Palestine-Israel conflict Opens in new window ] The Canavan sisters have lived in Bombay Street beside the peace wall – or peace line – since it was built at the beginning of the Troubles. In August 1969, they were teenagers when a loyalist mob set fire to the houses and burned an entire street to the ground. The family of seven spent a winter in a tiny caravan with no toilet or electricity. 'If I won a caravan in a ballot now, I wouldn't take it,' says Patsy. The burning of Bombay Street was an attack that became synonymous with the outbreak of the Troubles. Within a year, the homes were rebuilt through an extraordinary community effort and the Canavans moved back. No 45, the home of Jean Canavan's grandfather, is now No 25, where she lives. Upstairs in the back bedroom, the retired care worker opens the blinds to show a large metal cage that covers the window. The Cupar Way side of the peace wall in west Belfast. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Beyond it is the wall – it reaches 14 metres in height (45ft) at certain points and stretches for 650 metres – which is the highest and longest of the remaining interface structures that are mainly in Belfast. In the back bedroom, clothes are folded neatly on a single bed; it is a room that's barely used. 'We're living here all our lives so we've got used to it. We don't even realise the peace line is behind us sometimes,' says Jean. 'But if that wall came down you wouldn't know what would happen. You feel safer with it up.' She points to 'our neighbours who we never see' on the Shankill side. 'They're not looking out on to cages like us, they look on to a road,' she says. 'We've never met anyone the other side of that peace wall; they don't want it down either, I know that. During the Troubles, it was bad, but it seems to have settled down a bit ... our houses still get stoned now and again. Some mornings you would wake up and find the stones lying outside your front door — Jean Canavan 'It's entirely different now across the road, there's all new estates and new houses in those wee streets leading to the Shankill.' The siblings have invited us to their homes – they live facing each other – on a small street which is filled with dozens of tourists by 11am. A third sister lives on the same street and a fourth is around the corner. American accents and the rumbling of black taxi engines (the taxis do official tours of the communities) echo around a republican memorial garden at the entrance to Bombay Street. Overlooking it is a mural of the original street on the night it was set alight. The peace gates at Lanark Way between the Shankill and Falls roads close every evening at 10.30pm and reopen at 6am. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Under its shadow is the concrete wall, reinforced with green corrugated metal sheeting and topped with barbed wire. Scorch marks beside their sister's front door are a visible reminder of a petrol bomb hurled across from the 'other side', says Jean. 'There was no peace line before the Troubles. It went up as timber at first ... and then they kept building it higher with wire around the top. [ There's more to Irish history than eight centuries of British oppression and failed uprisings Opens in new window ] 'During the Troubles, it was bad, but it seems to have settled down a bit ... our houses still get stoned now and again. Some mornings you would wake up and find the stones lying outside your front door.' The sisters say they know when it's 'only kids' throwing stones because they 'just hit the wires'. 'But we know when it's bigger people because they come right over and smash the windows of these houses.' To protect their cars, they park them on different sides of the street. 'My brother-in-law's car sits at my front door because when we get hit, it's our roofs get smashed. But on the opposite side (where Patsy lives), the cars get it,' says Jean. 'There's nothing you can do, really. We've learned to live with it.' As a Malaysian tour bus pulls in, a little girl living on the street changes into a pair of heavy Irish dancing shoes and dances a jig for her grandfather at their front door. Tourists visit the Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden, on Bombay Street, Belfast. Behind the memorial garden is the Peace Wall between the nationalist Falls Road and unionist Shankill Road. Photo: Bryan O'Brien There are cones outside homes to ensure residents keep their car parking spaces. Tourist guides provide a running commentary on the history of the area. 'I've seen them coming in on New Year's Eve. It's constant,' says Jean. 'Boycie (the late actor John Challis) from Only Fools and Horses even visited.' For Patsy Canavan, there's 'too many people coming in, too many cars'. 'I tell you, some of them look into your window,' she adds. Peace Wall from Bombay Street side in West Belfast. Photo: Bryan O'Brien Jean Canavan looks out of a bedroom window towards the 'cage' and peace wall behind her home in Bombay Street in the Falls Road area of west Belfast. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Feet from the edge of the Peace Wall, a protective metal cage, behind the home of Jean Canavan protects her back yard area in Bombay Street. Photo: Bryan O'Brien At the top of Cupar Way, the sisters point to a sign outside a new coffee shop advertising souvenirs. Jean is curious to know what they are selling. 'People have said to us: 'Why don't you open up a wee tea room?'' she says, giggling. Inside the shop, owner Sandy McDermott points to a half-empty display of peace wall fridge magnets, one of their biggest sellers. Small glass jars of Belfast soil are given away 'for free' with each purchase, he adds. 'It's weird, coming to look at a wall ... but people love it. We take it for granted. Americans still can't believe it's in operation,' says McDermott, a builder who grew up on the Shankill Road and opened his shop a fortnight earlier. 'You want to see how many Brazilians come here, it's unbelievable.' In 2013, the Stormont Executive set a target to remove all peace walls by 2023. Jean says reaching that target was always going to be difficult. [ Brian Rowan: the 'long and difficult journey' to decommissioning in the North Opens in new window ] 'I don't think we'll ever see it coming down in our days.' But she believes there is progress. 'Walking down past the other side of the wall today, I don't feel as bad as I would have done 10 or 20 years ago. But it's because we were all together. I wouldn't do it on my own. 'This is the only scar it leaves us with; we have to watch and we're afraid to go into certain places. 'My grandson doesn't care walking past it – which is good. You say to yourself, if you went to live somewhere else, god knows what it would be like. 'We've witnessed a lot and our lives would have been very different if the Troubles hadn't happened. But you just get on with it.' Passing through the peace gates at Lanark Way – which have roads running through them but still close at 10.30pm each night and reopen at 6am – Patsy is also firm in her opposition to change. Patsy and Jean Canavan were young girls when in 1969 their family home was burned out along with other houses on the street. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Last month, Stormont's Department of Justice leafleted the area about plans to 'reimage' the steel gates. While there has been relative stability in recent years, some of the worst sectarian violence in decades took place near the Lanark Way gates in 2021. 'They're talking about them being replaced with see-through gates. I don't know if that's a good's idea,' says Patsy. She is aware of those who would like to see the walls demolished. 'If the peace wall wasn't there, we wouldn't be living here,' adds Patsy. 'We wouldn't want to see it coming down, it's far too early.'
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Irish Times
Ireland is in an adolescent stage where everything that smacks of Old Ireland is embarrassing
John Henry Newman has been declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIV. The title has been given to only 38 saints, each recognised for their intellectual and spiritual contribution to the life of the Catholic Church. There is a certain symmetry in that Leo XIII declared Newman a cardinal in 1879. This acknowledgment by Leo XIII was an immense relief to Newman. Formerly lauded as one of Anglicanism's most brilliant minds, his reception into the Catholic Church required him to renounce his Oxford academic career. He was shunned by most of his social circle, including his sister Harriet, who never spoke to him again. Despite this enormous sacrifice, he still faced a lack of acceptance from some prominent Catholics. He wept on being made cardinal, declaring that 'the cloud is lifted forever'. Perhaps one cloud was lifted then, but Ireland remains curiously uninclined to acknowledge Newman's Irish links. Secular UCD seems more than mildly embarrassed that the founder of the forerunner of the college was not only a Catholic but now also a saint and doctor. READ MORE For example, UCD originally had no plans to send an official representative to Newman's canonisation in 2019. [ Unthinkable: Has John Henry Newman's vision for universities died? Opens in new window ] The then lord mayor of Birmingham, Mohammed Azim, a Muslim Labour councillor, was delighted to participate in the canonisation to honour Newman's long association with the city. Prince Charles and 13 Westminster cross-party MPs and peers were also attending. UCD eventually bowed to pressure from former staff and alumni, including Prof John Kelly. It was a stark contrast to 55 years earlier. Dr Michael Tierney, sometimes called the second founder of UCD because he oversaw the move to Belfield, celebrated the centenary of the Catholic University in 1854 with 'much splendour', as Jeremiah Hogan later wrote in Studies. Representatives from 70 universities worldwide attended, honorary degrees were awarded, 900 guests enjoyed a garden party, and a banquet was held at the Gresham. Newman faces the same modern Irish attitudes toward Catholicism as Daniel O'Connell. People rightly are falling over themselves to applaud the Liberator's commitment to civil rights, especially his abhorrence of slavery. However, there is a palpable reluctance to confront the fact that Catholics were the prime focus of his activism. In an Ireland where the Catholic Church is routinely portrayed as the enemy of all progress, what are we to do with the fact that one of our greatest statesmen sought to uplift the battered, broken and demoralised papists and release them from the yoke of the Penal Laws? Of course, the church brought much of this current disdain upon itself through misuse of power, but there is now little desire to acknowledge any good at all in Catholicism. Yet after a brief flirtation with Deism in his student days, O'Connell's Catholic faith fuelled his activism. [ UCD fails founder and itself in handling of Newman canonisation Opens in new window ] It is progress that we are acknowledging O'Connell at all, even if tiptoeing around his inconvenient Catholicism. His legacy has been subject to attack from the very beginning, and not just by the British satirists who routinely portrayed him as the devil. For example, although initially in agreement with his decision to call off the monster meeting in Clontarf in 1843 after Robert Peel threatened the participants with troops and gunships, the Young Irelanders then denounced him as a failure and a coward. During the long years when the physical force tradition held sway, O'Connell's non-violence led to him being ignored. Éamon de Valera's 1967 speech at the reopening of Derrynane House, admitting that his generation had never given O'Connell the credit he was due, marked a turning point. Although they probably never met, there is an intriguing link between Newman and O'Connell, recorded by Patrick Manning in The Furrow. Initially, Newman despised O'Connell, referring to him as a 'vile human' for his Catholic emancipation campaign. Nicholas Wiseman was the first cardinal resident in England after the Reformation and the first Catholic archbishop of Westminster. Along with Michael Quin and O'Connell, he founded a Catholic periodical called the Dublin Review (confusingly published in London). It aimed to present an intellectually coherent Catholicism. Newman writes in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua that one article in the Dublin Review by Wiseman convinced him that by remaining an Anglican, he would be like the Monophysite schismatics in the church's early centuries. Without O'Connell's financial backing, there would have been no Dublin Review and no moment of clarity for Newman while reading Wiseman's article. (Incidentally, O'Connell was terrible with money, so he probably backed it with money he did not have.) Without Catholic emancipation, there would have been no Catholic University, and no establishment of UCD in 1908. When the medical school Newman founded was absorbed into UCD in 1909, it was the largest Irish medical college in Ireland. The first name entered on the roll of the Catholic University in 1854 was Daniel O'Connell, grandson of the Liberator. Ireland is still in a kind of adolescent stage, where everything that smacks of Old Ireland is embarrassing unless it can be presented as something in tune with current ideologies. Thankfully, both Newman and O'Connell are far too complex to be co-opted.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Irish Times
Chocolate Marquise
Serves : 6 Course : Dessert Cooking Time : 30 mins Prep Time : 30 mins Ingredients For the layered cake filling: 6 eggs, separated 160g caster sugar 60g cocoa powder, sifted 30g self-raising flour For the marquise: 160g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids 80g soft butter 80g caster sugar 3 eggs 250ml cream Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a loaf tin with parchment paper. Place the egg whites in a mixing bowl and whisk at high speed until the eggs form soft peaks. Add half the sugar and whisk until the meringue is glossy and forms stiff peaks, then set aside. Place the egg yolks in a mixing bowl and add the other half of the sugar. Whisk at high speed until the mix has doubled in size and turned pale; this takes about three minutes. Add the cocoa powder and flour to the egg yolk mix and fold together until it is combined. Fold the meringue into the egg yolk mix in three stages, keeping in as much air as possible. Once combined, pour this into the lined loaf tin and tap gently to allow the mix to fill the corners. Place the tin in the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes until a cake tester or skewer inserted into the centre comes away clean. The mix will soufflé up slightly but level out as it cools. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn it out upside down on to a flat surface and remove the parchment. Allow to fully cool, then turn the cake on its side and carefully slice lengthways into pieces approximately 1cm thick. You will need three even pieces; the rest of the cake can be frozen to be used at another other time. Trim the three slices slightly, if needed, into three rectangular pieces, just slightly smaller than the base of the loaf tin. Now it's time to make the marquise base. Break the chocolate and place in a heatproof bowl. Make a bain-marie by pouring a little water in a saucepan and placing the bowl on top (making sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl). Place on a low heat, stirring the chocolate pieces occasionally, until fully melted, then take off the heat. Place the butter and half the sugar into a bowl. Mix with a stand mixer or electric hand whisk until light and creamy, then add the cocoa powder mix until combined. Separate the eggs, keeping the egg whites in the fridge or freezing for later use, and add the egg yolks to another bowl. Add the other half of the sugar and mix until it has doubled in size and turned pale. In a separate bowl, whisk the cream until thickened with soft peaks. Pour the melted chocolate into the butter mix and carefully stir and fold with a spatula until well combined. Gently fold in the egg yolk mixture until well combined, then stir in the whipped cream. Line the loaf tin with cling film, leaving a 10cm overhang all the way around. Spoon in some marquise mix, enough to be around 2cm thick and even, then add the first rectangular piece of trimmed cake. Spoon more marquise mix on to cover the cake layer by around 1cm, then add the second piece of cake. Add more marquise mix to cover, then add the final piece of cake. Cover with the remaining marquise mix, the tap the tin gently to remove pockets of air, place in the fridge and leave to set overnight. To serve, carefully lift the marquise out of the loaf tin using the excess cling film and turn upside down on to a clean chopping board. Remove the cling film, then heat a sharp knife in hot water to make it easier to slice the marquise. Dry the knife and slice the marquise in pieces approximately 1-2cm thick.
