I made the following notes in an old factory that was built in 1906 at a cost of six hundred pounds. It was a draughty one story building which has stood for over a century…
Posts published by “Bob Quinn”
I admire old people who live by their wits, like the ancient American, a real estate man, whom I met in Galway years. He wore a badge on his lapel with the slogan: OLD AGE…
In August of 1969 I was driving across Ireland with the late Bearnard Ó Riain, the older brother of a good friend of mine, the late Dinno Ryan. Most of my old friends are now…
Another extract from Bob Quinn’s unpublishable (or unpublished) memoir – A Monk Manqué. In 1967, the fidgets struck again. That was the year my mother died, rapidly following my father. I confess now that I…
In the mid-1990s Seosamh O Cuaig and I were filming a programme for TG4 in the State of Minnesota. It concerned an 1880 shipload of emigrants from Conamara. In the city of St. Paul we…
I was pretty sure I was going to die, sooner rather than later, one midsummer’s night in Libya’s desert. It was 1988. A cousin of Colonel Ghaddafi, a military man, was driving us to meet…
Back in Dublin again, I was one of thirty, all-male trainees destined to become the camera, lighting and sound operators with the new television service. I started late, in November 1961 and found the first…
I’ve just made my last film, a short called Bog Graffiti. Another last film. I always make that resolution when a film is put to bed. Never again, I say, will I go through the…
Back to love and sex. Liking is preferable to loving – and less conducive to heartache. Youth is oblivious to that boring truth. The unbiddable first love of my life lived in Terenure, Dublin, a…
PROLOGUE ‘The reverend Judge leaned over and addressed the defendant’ ‘I have taken your spotless record into account.’ ‘However…by the power vested in me I am obliged to sentence you to three score years and…