The Irish author on Enid Blyton at bedtimes, discovering Dickens, and the brilliance of Edna O’Brien

My earliest reading memory
I am sitting at the kitchen table at home in Dublin. I am home from school. I am in short pants; my legs dangle. The book in front of me is called Step By Step. It has no author. On the amber paper cover, in my mother’s handwriting, is my name. It is my first spelling book. I still have it. It begins with easy ones, No, Go, So, and works through 20 pages to Deck, Dock, Duck. Everything that follows begins here. When you know your spellings, it is a triumphant moment. You have been given a key.

My favourite book growing up
My hunger for books allowed no time for a favourite. I was on to the next one. All of Enid Blyton might be one multi-volumed book in my memory. The Famous Five and The Secret Seven and the Mystery series all passing through my hands in bedtime reading, to be replaced later by westerns, especially those of Louis L’Amour, whose great virtue was the supply would never run out, because he wrote so many.