A humorous, enchanting and sparkling memoir, this is the story of a young boy who grew up in Dublin in the 1940s and ’50s, first on the banks of the Grand Canal and later in Ranelagh. It is also everyone’s story of the joys and pitfalls of growing-up, told with delightful and infectious humour. The boy, confused by everything, as only the first-born can be, romps through the first 13 years of his childhood like a bockety bicycle that won’t quite go where it’s steered. His early playground is the Grand Canal bank where, in the company of his friends — some more bockety than others — he goes crashing through the reeds, fishing nets flapping, in search of pinkeens.

Washing consisted of being sluiced down by your mam in a tin by bicycles, of a boy who hid behind the door and listened as the magnificent mams gathered and smoked and talked, after scrubbing the granite doorsteps until the flecks in them sparkled in the sunlight like silver.

In those days, a trip out to the seaside at Booterstown on the crossbar of your dad’s bike was as good as a trip to Spain. It was the days of Cleeve’s toffee and Nancyballs and Sailor’s Chew and Honey Bees and Fizz Bags and Gobstoppers. And a little later there was the terrible confusion of girls.

Bockety is a heart-warming story about a world and a time long gone — but not forgotten.

All in the Blood is a memoir compiled and edited by Honor O Brolchain from the writings of her grandmother, Geraldine Plunkett Dillon (1891-1986), daughter of Count Plunkett and sister of Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the executed 1916 leaders.

Geraldine Plunkett Dillon (‘Gerry’) wrote extensively about her family and ancestors, including Patrick Plunkett and Patrick Cranny, who were builders and developers in Rathmines, Donnybrook and Ballsbridge in the 19th century. She also depicted growing up in chaos at 26 Fitzwilliam Street and various other houses with her six siblings, her whimsical violent mother and quiet scholarly father.

Her story tracks through the new National University, where she studied Chemistry, events before and during the Rising (she was married on Easter Sunday, 1916 and watched the beginning of the Rising from the window of the Imperial Hotel in O’Connell Street) and through jails, raids, births and deaths, to the terror of Galway in Black and Tan times.

She writes with a unique style — blunt, entertaining and unsentimental — giving her story more the feeling of a novel than a piece of history.

To coincide with the publication of her book, Honor O Brolchain will talk about the rich, revolutionary but decidedly eccentric family, the Plunketts. Signed copies of this fascinating contribution to Irish family and political history will be available.

All in the Blood is published by Ranelagh publishers, A&A Farmar.

‘Celebrating Maeve Brennan’ will be an evening of music, readings and performance, inspired by the work of Ranelagh-born writer, Maeve Brennan. In 1934, Maeve Brennan’s father was posted to New York as part of the Irish diplomatic corps. The family settled in New York, where Maeve spent most of her life. In 1949, she joined the staff of The New Yorker, to which she contributed for more than 30 years. Between 1954 and 1981, she wrote for ‘The Talk of the Town’ column, a series of sketches about life in Manhattan, which she later compiled into a book called The Long Winded Lady. The New Yorker also published many of her short stories in a collection entitled The Springs of Affection.

After her death in 1993, an unknown novella, written by Brennan in the mid- 1940s, was discovered among her papers in a university archive. This novella, The Visitor, was published in Ireland, by New Island, to great critical acclaim in 2000.

Her biographer, Angela Bourke, will introduce the programme and there will be contributions from Ranelagh-based writers, Bill Barich, Evelyn Conlon, Aidan Matthews and James Ryan. Renowned local actress Olwen Fouere, will also contribute.

Local jazz musician Anna Jordan will play and sing the music of Billie Holiday, who was a contemporary of Maeve Brennan’s and much admired by her during her life in New York.