Interview 9 I just tried to get through my days [at school] without being found out as gay. Im 69, so no one even really imagined then that anyone could be anything that awful back then DavidSedaris: Idontknowhow tobuyaplane ticket.Idontopen anymailthat doesntlooklike fanmail. Photograph: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty sion and I didnt write about him. And then I went to North Carolina a couple months ago on a lecture tour, and everything I read . . . had my brother in it, and he was so happy, but none of it was about what he feared that I was going to write about. I tell him about a recent Onion headline: Author wishes she hadnt blown personal trauma on first book. He laughs. I did waste a lot of trauma in my first book . . . I actually find it much more rewarding to write about nothing . . . or to write about sneezing, a cough drop shooting out of my mouth and landing on the lap of the woman next to me on a plane. His writing is very linked to live performance. When I was young, I was living in Chicago, and I would read out loud a lot. Id be invited to be one of five people who read on a night. So Id sit in the audience, and Id realise, Oh, I stopped listening to that person. Why did I stop listening? . . . because the character doesnt want anything. Or the persons just broken up with someone, and theyre just talking about their feelings or nobody has a name or no one has been described. I was paying attention to why I stopped listening. He sometimes glides without much comment over sad and unsettling material in his work. He also does so as were speaking. Someone asked me recently, Whats your central trauma? And I thought, I dont have one. And I was raped twice. And I dont have a sexual trauma. Maybe because [back] when it happened, if you were a gay man, it would be like saying that somebody robbed you in prison. Youre in prison. Shut the f**k up. Thats what you get. So you couldnt complain about it . . . So it wasnt traumatising to me because there wasnt a structure for it. And its not like I need now to go to a therapist and deal with it. I think Im fine. And Im not saying that other people who were raped dont have every right to be upset about it. Its just that for me personally, you would just get on with it. This is upsetting but he does seem to just get on with things. He writes a daily diary and hes started publishing collections of his diaries in recent years. Over the years, I see things . . . things I was tearing at my breast over, breaking up with somebody or something like that. And now its funny to me. How does he explain to strangers what he does? A lot of times, if Im in a car and Im being driven, the driver will say, What do you do? And I say, I write and they say, What kind of things do you write about? And Ill often say, If you turned around and stabbed me in my eye, I would wait until it was funny, and then I would write about it. I wouldnt write about it before its funny because that doesnt interest me. And eventually it will be funny. TheLandandItsPeoplebyDavidSedaris ispublishedbyAbacus. The 24-hour national rape crisis helpline canbereachedon1800778888 THE IRISH TIMES Weekend Saturday, August 1, 2026 DavidSedarisontheseriousbusinessofcomedy.Page8 WalledtownsofIreland:RositaBolandvisitsWexford.Page10 PatrickFreyne:GlenHansardwasIrelandsbandleader.Page5 WEEKEND THE IRISH TIMES Saturday, August 1st, 2026 A WOUND IS HEALED Afterdecadesofheartbreakandnearmisses, Mayofinallyhasitsmomentinthesun By 2 Cover story A HOUSE OF PAIN NO MORE MayosAll-Irelandtriumphreleased75yearsof pent-upemotioninoneunforgettableafternoon ByKeithDuggan M acHale Park in Castlebar has always been best suited to those Saturday-night matches in winter, when the season is young and the promise uncontained. An ideal Cover story meme, the jokes came thick and fast. Through all that, Mayo footballers and supporters never shied away from speaking about it, nor returning to All-Ireland finals. Maybe we make too much of the football, Fr Leo Morahan, the former county board executive, said back in 2007. Mayo has the 4 Cover story 2004, when he was beginning his sec- ond term as Mayo manager. By September, he had the county back in an All-Ireland final, when Kerry defeated his young team. Like most GAA counties, the network of names and connections within Mayo football are impossibly dense: you could fill the People GLEN HANSARD WAS OUR NATIONAL BARD TheFramesfrontmanwasIrelandsbandleader, anditfeltlikehewouldbedoingthejobfor alongtime ByPatrickFreyne I n the 1990s, I wasnt convinced by The Frames. They felt a bit mainstream. A bit major label. I was a young idiot. Later, a friend convinced me that I 6 Music THE PIANIST WHO PLAYS WITH ONE HAND ONLY Freya Terris is the first pianist to pass their Grade 8 piano exam playing solely with their left hand ByJohnOConnor L ike countless other young musicians, Freya Terris discovered her love of music at the piano stool. Yet her journey has been anyt People 7 Fearkeptmefrom doingwhatIreally wantedtodoorsay Q&ARevJanetBroderick The Donegal-based priest on childhood games with her brother actor Matthew Broderick, how people react when she preaches sermons, and who could play her in a biopic Howagreeableareyou? I think life has made me agreeable 8 Interview I DONT LIKE EXTREMISTS. BUT I FIND THEM THRILLING AS CHARACTERS TheUSwriterandhumouristtalksabouttheseriousbusinessofbeingfunny onthepageandathislivereadings ByPatrickFreyne WEEKEND INTERVIEW DAVID SEDARIS A few days after I interview David Sedaris, I receive a thank-you postcard fe Interview 9 I just tried to get through my days [at school] without being found out as gay. Im 69, so no one even really imagined then that anyone could be anything that awful back then DavidSedaris: Idontknowhow tobuyaplane ticket.Idontopen anymailthat doesntlooklike fanmail. Photograph: Leonardo 10 Feature HISTORY EMBRACES US EVERY DAY IN WEXFORD In the first of a four-part series on Irelands walled towns, we visit Wexford, where history is quite literally in peoples back gardens ByRositaBoland I f Billy Colfer talked to you about history, youd sit up and listen, Paul Walsh tells me. W Feature field. We discovered that Sparrow was a surname of ship owners back in the 1830s, Hussey says. Hussey brings me out into their back garden to show me where, more than a century ago, a house was built against the other side of their wall. The medieval wall thus became a party wall. It towers 12 Photo essay Formedtotacklethe siltingissueintheriver Liffey,thereservenow extendstotheentirety ofthebay WILD AT HEART Photographs: DaraMacDónaill andEndaODowd Words: EndaODowd O f the 797 Unesco biosphere reserves across 147 countries, Dublin Bay is the only one to include a national capital Photo essay DublinsNorth BullIsland,partof theDublinBay Unescobiosphere reserve,isnow hometo180 differentspeciesof bird.However, conservationists warnthat,asworks tostopcoastal erosionareerected alongthecoastline, theirlong-term impactonthe ecologyand landscapemaybe difficulttopredict. Photographs: 14 Feature TWINS PEAK WERE PROBABLY MIRROR IMAGES OF EACH OTHER Whetheritsthehighsofalwayshavingcompanyor thelowsofsensingtheotherspain,thebestpartof beingatwinisneverbeingstuckforafriend ByJenHogan I relands birth rate may be falling, but the incidence of twin births continues to rise, with al Feature 15 Its sometimes fun and its sometimes not, because they could steal your stuff had a friend beside you. In fact, the twins only really went their separate ways when they went to college and that was a major shock, Emma says. Rebecca says there are lots of upsides to being a twin, but the T 16 Essay he vintage front page shows a street full of Dublin holidaymakers smiling at the camera, sitting on the kerb, waiting for the bus in the sun. But these early queues soon dissipated. Bank holiday spoiled by weather, announces the reusable headline. The citys thoroughfares were WEEKEND E Essay 17 Governments might fancy deploying bank holidays to foster cohesion and goodwill, but that doesnt mean everybody has to play along crashing out of the Fifa World Cup was that Friday, July 24th, became the bank holiday that never was. Would Keir Starmers mooted last act have applied across 18 Feature BE LIKE JOHN LENNON AND BUY AN IRISH ISLAND Four islands for sale off Mayo, Donegal, Tipperary and Galway, with bidding starting at 299,000 ByJessicaDoyle W hen you attract screaming fans everywhere you go, what do you do to get some peace and quiet? You buy an island, of course. Tha People 19 SARAH MOSS Teenage dieting made me an expert in mental arithmetic I bofin. It is suitable for grazing and features two natural freshwater lakes. The island measures 1.2km by 0.4km and rises to a maximum height of 63.3m above sea level. It is a Special Protection Area under the EU Bird 20 Environment TOMAÍ Ó CONGHAILE Our beautiful, troubled planet needs a skilled reconciler T he World Cup may be over but the fallout continues: Trumps unwanted interventions; Germanys early exit; football not coming home; Argentinas post-final petulance. Not to mention, of course, that banner. Environment 21 British navy, spent several days imprisoned in the Tower of London on corruption charges, and died of smallpox before reaching 40. Initially, a strait running between the two main islands was named after him and, by 1765, the Falkland Islands had become the English name for the entire 22 Obituaries FIRST WOMAN DIRECTOR OF A NATIONAL INSTITUTION, LIBRARIAN AND ACADEMIC Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon Born: January 28th, 1943 Died: July 23rd, 2026 Patricia (Pat, Patsy) Donlon, who has died peacefully aged 83 at Blackrock Hospice, Dublin, was a leading light in that remarkable generat Obituaries 23 RENOWNED ORNITHOLOGIST AND COMIC ACTOR WHO STARRED IN THE GOODIES Bill Oddie BillOddiewasamemberofcomedy trioTheGoodies,whoseanarchicTV sketchshowairedinthe1970sand 1980s.Photograph:IanGavan/Getty Born: July 7th, 1941 Died: July 25th, 2026 Bill Oddie, who has died aged 85, was a mul 24 Last word DAVID McWILLIAMS ThefirstvictimofAI? Theeconomy W e are in an era of great technological advances, or so say all the tech bros who are championing not just AI, but a whole host of technological innovations from finance and healthcare to supply chain management and communications. In