The Easter Rising, my grandfather and the untold story of Sir Roger Casement

[bemildred]

5. Oh yes, Twain was. That's not the part of his career they like to talk about now.

He was a big entertainer in his day, made lots of money doing lectures, travelled all over. He was Jane Fonda back then, he really got into them about the war in the Philippines too.

There is a strain of anti-establishment literature in the USA that goes all the way back, the low style, Steinbeck or example, and Twain falls squarely within it.

My father was born in Glasgow in 1892, emigrated to Canada at the age of 16, worked his way across to Vancouver on the Trans-Canadian rail line, got in the Great War, got a leg half shot off, lost all his teeth, rehabilitated, worked his way down the coast to LA, owned a car park in Hollywood in the 1930s, married my mother, a widow with 3 children at the age of 52 or so, and then had 3 more, I was the first of those. He died at the age of 91, in Victoria, Canada, almost made 92. Tough people. That's what I remember.