My Ireland My England

Book excerpt: In 1948, an ambitious 20 year-old Irish journalist with law and law-reporting experience, arrived in Shrewsbury at 9.15 a.m to join a national press agency, tired and hungry after the night boat from Dublin, two trains, and a six hour wait at Crewe Junction. His new boss shook hands in the office at Shoplatch and sent him back up the town to a divorce court. He bought himself a Mars bar for breakfast. After an hour of taking down the most lubricious evidence he had ever heard, about women's underwear draped over a chair, a man in her bed and his shoes under it, the court rose, the clerk sent the bailiff out for a policeman who took him downstairs to a cell. the constable shut the door. the clerk arrived and offered the prisoner a cigarette, declined. He took off his wig and sat down beside him to ask who he was, who he worked for, where did he come from, and when? the reporter replied - Paddy McGarvey, Bryce Thomas Press Agency in Shoplatch, from Dublin, this morning, and the clerk roared with laughter "You are not allowed to write down evidence in divorce; it is illegal. You should have been told that by your editor. You must wait to hear the judge's summary and decision, to report that if you wish." Resuming his wig, he told the police there would be no charge, and to release him. the clerk told the resumed court he comes only this very this morning from a country which forbids divorce, and the court roared with laughter. His meekly polite employer, Leslie Bryce Thomas, arrived and took him back to the office, on this, his first morning, job, court, day, police cell, in England.