McCarthy's Bar - Pete McCarthy

Ireland, land of the Leprechauns, hospitality, lots of English tax exiles and apparently land of many a pub with McCarthy in the title. Well so I am lead to believe having read Pete McCarthy’s journal of his trip round Ireland in a battered old Volvo, with a dead bird trailing out of its exhaust. Now to get one thing straight, I am not a fan of travel books, Mr Bryson the acclaimed guru of the genre and myself do not get on. Sorry, he sends me to sleep with the boring bits, of which there are usually at least 5 or 6 chapters. So, why did I try McCarthy’s bar, well partly to try and understand the Irish a little more? My girlfriend’s family ...

What a brilliantly simple idea for a book! Travel around Ireland and visit as many bars as you can find that match your name. It would been more challenging if he'd picked somewhere like Japan for instance - would he have managed to obtain a drink at all? I wonder? Of course, relatively easy if like this author you have some Irish heritage and you're called McCarthy - Mr and Mrs White Swan would have a field day in England too, but it maybe a bit more difficult for most of us. This is McCarthys first book and it's an impressive debut. I only hope that the copious amounts of alcohol consumed in the research for this book have not resulted in some serious ...

"Never pass a bar that has your name on it." is,according to the author of this book, the eigth rule of travel. And, in the west of Ireland, a proliferation of McCarthy's (Or MacCarthy's) bars makes this an easy edict for Pete McCarthy to follow. McCarthy was born in Warrington, England to an Irish mother and an English father. As a child, he made frequent visits to Ireland to see relatives and came to regard the country as his spiritual home, a place full of "golden childhood memories". His book "McCarthy's Bar" is the story of his return as an adult. McCarthy has a very perceptive view of Ireland (and all ...