Tobin is not an indigenous Irish name, but the family can be regarded as having become completely hibernicized. Its Irish form, Toibín, is a gaelicized version of the Norman ‘St. Aubyn.’ Another interpretation is that the name was first called de St. Aubyn and the original bearers were from Aubyn, in Brittany, France.
According to the renowned Irish historian and genealogist, Edward MacLysaght (1887-1986), the family came to Ireland in the wake of the Norman invasion and by 1200 were settled in Counties Tipperary and Kilkenny, from where they spread to the neighboring counties of Waterford and Cork. They are still found in considerable numbers in those counties, though the name is relatively rare elsewhere in Ireland. The Tobins became so influential in Co. Tipperary that in medieval times, the head of the family was known as Baron of Coursey, though this was not an officially recognized title. According to Clyn in his annals, the fourteenth century Tobins were a turbulent sept
Image of a writer, please! The writer is someone hunched over a keyboard in a dingy attic. The writer s complexion has an unhealthy pallor from spending too much time in said attic. The writer blinks short-sightedly when dragged reluctantly into the light. The writer so described is clearly not, emphatically not, Tanya Farrelly, author and teacher.
The woman with the blonde hair instantly lights up your reporter s screen when the Zoom call connection comes alive. The room from which she is talking is far from being a dusty garret. She has the good fortune instead to reside in a house overlooking the seafront in Bray. This is where she is happy to be.
Dr Aoife Bhreatnach has spent the past year getting inside the prudish and outraged mind of the Irish book censor for her podcast series.
Over the past century, thousands of books were banned in what was one of the most draconian censorship regimes in Europe as our moral guardians fought to rid the country of any hint of smut.
They ranged from literary novels such as
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger,
Country Girls by Edna O’Brien and
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller to pulp fiction and Madonna’s book of explicit photos,
Sex, which was banned as late as November 1992.