Grace Wells
speaker
164 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 2 Aug
Grace Wells’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.
Appearances
But I console myself that every writer who stays at the Heinrich Boll cottage turns up in a similar state
It's a wet summer Sunday.
Outside, damp sheep are sheltering beneath gorse bushes, and there's nothing to see except the occasional seagull drifting out of the mist.
I tell myself I am taking the day off, having a proper Sunday rest.
I make tea and lounge on the sofa, and get up every so often to sift through the bookshelf looking for something to read.
The trouble is, the bookshelf is a messy jumble of novels, pulp fiction, biographies of footballers, cookbooks by celebrity chefs, and lost, in among them, collections of poetry by writers I love.
I come across Virginia Woolf's diary and lie down to read it, but every time I glance up, I see that messy rabble of books.
I'm trying to ignore those shelves, but there's a loud voice in me denouncing the mess of those bookshelves as an absolute disgrace.
Books are a ritual part of the ball cottage.
Every visiting writer gifts a signed copy of their latest book to the house.
I know these shelves are full of special signed books, but I remind myself I am taking the day off.
There are hundreds of books on those shelves.
It would take a person hours to sort them.
Still, my eyes will keep glancing over, and what screams out at me every time is a large hardback blaring the word HOLLYWOOD.
It is a wet summer Sunday in Mayo and I'm feeling fragile as a writer and do not want to think about fame.
I carry Hollywood off along the corridor to Heinrich Boll's old study and leave it on the empty shelves there.
And then I know it's too late.
I can't stop myself.
I want those books tidy.
Most of all, though I can't exactly say why, I want to rescue all the poetry books that are already so slender and small and which have simply disappeared in the jumble.
Showing 21–40 of 164 · page 2 of 9
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