Peter Carr

Peter Carr (author) on "The Night of the Big Wind". www.whiterowpress.com/bigwind.htm
Peter Carr is author of The Most Unpretending of Places and The Night of the Big Wind. His most recent works, Portavo: an Irish townland and its peoples (parts one and two), have been described as 'a masterpiece', 'a spellbinder', 'a benchmark for excellence', and 'an Irish Montaillou'. The two volumes follow the fortunes of a single Irish townland (near Bangor, County Down) from 400,000,000 years ago to the present, adroitly interweaving its geography, geology, history, archaeology, folklore and traditions. They also tell the story of the townland's long-time owners, the enigmatic Ker family, who arrived in Ireland as fugitives from justice in the wake of the murder of Rizzio, favourite of Mary Queen of Scots, rose to become one of the richest landowning families in Ireland, then spectacularly collapsed, amidst suicide, incest, alcoholism and madness. Portavo II covering the period from the famine to the present was published in November 2005 by White Row Press, of which he is a founder. It was nominated for the Wolfson history prize.