At home with Lee Dunne

Lee Dunne lives with his wife Maura in a 20-year-old semi-detached house in an estate in the North Wicklow village of Greystones and only five minutes walk from the sea.
“We’ve been her for about a year,” he says. “I used to live in Bray but I just wanted to get some little more quietness into my life and I have it here. I’m just off Church Lane and Greystones still retains the feel of a village. I’ve everything I want in terms of shops close at hand, and a view of the sea from the house, so I have the best of both worlds. It’s a perfect place for me to work too.”
But the house is not always quiet, as Dunne likes to play guitar and piano and listen to his music collection, and organises musical evenings here. “Some of our dinner guests include Deirdre Lawless from Fair City and Fran Dempsey, and various other people who pop in from time to time.” Dunne has a fine collection of records too. “I’m a music fan from way back. I’m a big Dylan freak and I love the standards guys like Sinatra sing. But I also watch a lot of classical music on the Arts Channel on the television. It’s wonderful, from jazz right through to the top operas.”
Not surprisingly, the house is awash with books, although the orderliness Lee attributes to Maura. “She’s a classicist, and has shelves of Greek and Roman and Joseph Campbell books, all that stuff. She’s mainly responsible for keeping them reasonably tidy. I have books I bought for peanuts when I was a cab driver in London, like the complete works of Tolstoy, Gorki, all those guys. I’m also a big fan of Philip Roth. He’s the greatest novelist who ever lived, but admits to being even more of a reader now than ever.”
That orderliness is evident throughout the house, except in Lee’s upstairs work-room. “Every morning I just write in long hand in a copy book at a table in the dining room downstairs, just my first thoughts, no matter the quality or subject matter. It’s a form of limbering up, and when I’ve eventually filled a copy book I just throw it away. But I later go upstairs to my computer to work, and that room is really untidy, books and newspapers and stuff all over the place, like a jumble sale. But it doesn’t bother me and I know where everything is. I’m comfortable writing here. I’m also lucky in that writing is really a hobby for me, something I can’t imagine not doing, so it’s great to be able to make a bit of a living from a hobby.”
Having written something like 2,000 episodes of radio soaps and radio plays for RTE and the BBC, you might expect this author to be a bit of a radio fan. “No, I don’t listen to much radio,” he admits. “I listen to the news headlines, but they’re always deadly depressing, so I switch off. But the TV gets a look-in from him, not just for the arts programmes, but for sport. “I’ve been a Man U freak since I was 14! It’s like having an incurable illness. But I’m fussy about watching TV. If I was writing upstairs and felt a bit tired I might come down and switch on the TV and watch something like the film Casablanca, even though I’ve seen it hundreds of time, but I’m just as likely to turn it off and go back to my writing.
You might also spot the candles about the house. “Maura and I meditate,” he says. “She sets it up. She’s very spiritual, and she uses candles and incense. It really works for me.”
The contentment he seems to have realised in his life here doesn’t stop him being reflective of the world and its ways. “I think this generation of young people have the healthiest attitude of any generation, in spite of the fact they have so many pressures and stuff to deal with,” he contends. “I don’t care about all this stuff about how badly they behave. All young people misbehave. But I hope they learn something from my new book because it deals with the problem of alcoholism.”
You might imagine that Lee should have a pet or two, given his relatively rural idyll, but no. “I’ve lots of cats and dogs over the years, but I think I’ve reached the point in life where I feel I’ve paid my dues! At one time I bred wolfhounds and used to buy 80 pints of milk a week!”
His most prized possession is a first edition of his own book Goodbye To The Hill, published in the '60s. “It’s a copy I gave to my mother in 1965. She wasn’t totally enamoured with my writing, actually. So she loaned it to the man who used to collect her insurance money every week to put away a few bob for the funeral. But about a year ago, 40 years later, I got it back and it’s in pristine condition too. No matter where I go I’ll always want this book with me. It’s very precious to me.”b

Paddy Maguire Is Dead by Lee Dunne, with a new introduction by John Broderick, is published by Killynon House.