About

Stephen Shellard

I live in  Dumfries in South West Scotland, but grew up in Newry Northern Ireland,  and spent about 8 years in Reading, where I attended the University, worked for a couple of years as a detached youth worker, but also spent some time in an assortment of other jobs.

I am a retired College lecturer, having worked for a good part of my teaching career with students with learning support needs, but latterly also taught psychology and politics. My current writing and blogging are recreational and not intended as a career.

Remembered Fragments – A Memoir

On the 20th May 2024 I published a memoir which is available on Amazon as a paperback and an ebook.

Reviews

“In marking his unique place within a territory where who-owns-what-space is often a highly contentious issue, the County Down born writer blends sharp observation, humour and affection to call up memories from the people, the music, the meeting places, the watering holes and the dance halls of growing up around the beautiful shores of Carlingford Lough in the second half of the last century.” Colum Sands, folk musician and winner of the Living Tradition Award for services to Folk and Traditional Music.

Irish Times – “compelling, informative and entertaining.” Pat Quigley, biographer of Constance, Casimir and Stanislav Markievicz

Remembered Fragments is grounded in my coming of age during the civil and political disintegration in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and early 1970s. It tells the story of my Anglo-Irish family with its roots in Dublin, Limerick and Bandon, Co. Cork, where his parents met, and married in 1945. Following the Second World War, they moved to Belfast and then to Newry, where the author was born in 1953. These relocations did not diminish enduring family affections and interests which crossed all the vexed geographical, political and religious divisions of Ireland.
I am sharply critical of the failures of unionist politics to respond constructively to the changing world of the 1960s. From the perspective of wider experience in the 1970s and 1980s, in Canada, in Reading, in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, in West Berlin, I reflect on the trauma of my homeland in the context of the national and international turmoil of that era. The narrative describes the various challenges which eventually led my family to move to southwest Scotland in the second half of the 1980s.

It is my hope that Remembered Fragments offers a perspective on the Northern Irish Troubles which reminds us that, amidst the violence which led up to the Good Friday Agreement, many people were unwilling to take a position on either side and were always seeking and hoping for a more agreeable way to live. It is a narrative defined by anecdote and inspired by the riches of human character. It is a political commentary which I strive to avoid rancour or invective and in some small way to make a contribution to the literature and understanding of a period in Irish history which is still a painful memory for many but I still feel able to recalls with affection and I hope, humour.

Remembered Fragments Playlist page.

Carruchan Press

For communication on matters relating to this blog, Remembered Fragments, general enquiries to the author, please email Stephen Shellard on carruchan.press@gmail.com