P J Kavanagh
A Passion to Entertain
Ireland's Minstrel: A Life of Tom Moore: Poet, Patriot and Byron’s Friend
By Linda Kelly
I B Tauris 259pp £20 order from our bookshop
Nothing is more difficult to convey in a biography than the personal charm of its subject (should he or she possess that quality, which Thomas Moore did, in bucketfuls), and it is greatly to Linda Kelly's credit that she triumphantly does so. Her task is made easier because nearly everyone he met fell, in some sense, in love with him, even his opponent in an early duel, and they said so, even the hardest-headed. He could not go on a sea voyage without making a lifelong friend of the captain, and Byron, who adored him, confided to his journal whilst travelling: ‘He has but one fault – and that one I daily regret – he is not here.’
Born in 1779 in Dublin, the son of a Catholic grocer, loving and loved by his mother and father, from the beginning he climbed like a rocket, which of course aroused suspicion. A recent American commentator dismissed him as ‘an endearing little snob’, and his contemporary Leigh Hunt sneered that
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers