Maeve Binchy (1940–2012), novelist and playwright, one of Ireland's most celebrated writers
In Maeve Binchy's posthumously published, final novel, A Week in Winter (2012, Orion), Irish native Frank Hanratty takes an American visitor he has befriended, an actor masquerading as "John", to visit "an old film director", who serves them nettle soup (Chapter 5, page 63).
Maeve Binchy | Stella Maeve | Maeve O'Boyle | Maeve McGuire | Maeve Dermody | Maeve | Maeve Ingoldsby | Maeve Higgins | Maeve Berry | D. A. Binchy |
Notable members, past and present, include Somerset Maugham (the Honorary President when the Guild was founded in 1960), Maeve Binchy, Egon Ronay, Charlie Connelly, Bill Birkett, Duncan J. D. Smith and Hilary Bradt.
Snell was working as a freelance producer for the BBC when he met Maeve Binchy in London; they married in 1977 and ultimately moved to her hometown, Dalkey, Ireland (just outside Dublin).
Irish writers whose work is targeted at more commercial audiences, among them Cecilia Ahern (PS, I Love You), Maeve Binchy (Tara Road), John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas), Marian Keyes (Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married) and Joseph O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians, Desperadoes), have had considerable commercial success internationally.
In competition with works by other best-selling authors, such as Ruth Rendell, Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope, Chickenfeed has won two awards as the best novella in the ‘Quick Reads’ genre.