Items related to The Killing Snows: The Defining Novel of The Great...
Synopsis
December 12th, 1846. At the height of the Great Hunger - the Killing Snows. As the Irish Famine came towards its climax of starvation and disease, Ireland was hit by the worst snow storm in recent history. Nothing like it had been seen in living memory, nor has it in all the years since. In 1846, the potato crop had failed for the second time, and this time the failure was total. In a panic, the Government instituted road building works as a means of paying people to buy corn. By November half a million people were working at 7 and 8 pennies a day, dropping to 2 and 3 pennies as piecework was introduced. But the weather worsened and it began to snow. In 1990, a Famine Relief payroll was discovered in a farm building in County Mayo. It covered 4 weeks in November and December 1846 in the Ox Mountains in East Mayo. It clearly showed the evidence of the reduction in wages week after week. Most horrific of all, the payroll ends abruptly in the final week as the heaviest snowstorm hit Ireland on December 12th, and the people in the mountains were cut off to starve or freeze to death. 'The Killing Snows' was inspired by this document. It is also based on the true story of the man who wrote it, of the woman who loved him and of an impossible love story played out against a setting of famine, fever and death.
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About the Author
Charles Egan was born in Nottingham, England of Irish parents. When he was five, the family returned to Ireland, as his father had been appointed Resident Medical Superintendant of St. Lukes, a psychiatric hospital in Clonmel, in County Tipperary. Every summer they visited his fathers familys farm, outside Kiltimagh in County Mayo for a month. Charles grandmother and uncles spent many evenings, talking about family and local history. It was probably from this, that he became so interested in history. The family subsequently moved to County Wicklow, where he initially attended the De La Salle Brothers school in Wicklow town. He then went to Clongowes Wood College (James Joyce s alma mater) where he sat his Intermediate and Leaving Certificate examinations. He studied Commerce in University College Dublin, graduating in 1973. After an initial career in the private sector, including Marubeni Dublin, (where he met his future wife, Carmel), he joined the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) in Dublin. After a few years, the desire to be his own boss, led him to resign and set up his own business, which has now been running for 30 years. Apart from business, his main interests are history and international travel, both of which he has covered extensively.
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