Atlantic Affair

In starting my research, I returned to Ireland, which I had known only as a child.  I went back with a sense of guilt. In the 1920s my father won a medal in the Tailteann Games, the ‘Irish Reconciliation Olympics’, had been almost unbeatable as a yachtsman on Lough Derg and had been a scratch golfer at Birr and Portmarnock – he was a real Irish sportsman. But his English wife had been so different – she loved her books and her garden.

I then found a family ‘secret’. I no longer felt guilty. Details were impossible to come by until I searched through the shopping bags of family papers, letters and photos my brother Peter had given to me before his death in 1990. I found he had written his childhood story. It told of the War of Independence, the arrival of the Black and Tans and details of the ‘secret’. 

Peter’s story became my book Irish Flames – Peter Waller’s true story of the arrival of the Black and Tans.

During my research, I traced the people and places in the story. In respect for the past and the sensitivity of the present, I changed their names. My father became Captain Alec Casemond, his wife was Meli and Peter was Robbie.

My research has continued. Amongst a wealth of information, I have found: the log of his trip, the court case on the torching of my father’s house in the 1930s and an attack on my father by the Free State Government which led to leaflets being distributed around Ireland.
           
To those who enjoyed Irish Flames and are awaiting the sequel, I ask for your patience. On every visit to Ireland I unearth further details of the story of an Irishman who, in the end, was forced to leave his country.