A Long Way Home

About the Book

A Long Way Home is a dramatic and tension-filled fictional story that explores the relationship between the English and the Irish in the late nineteenth century. It provides a fascinating insight into the issues created when those looking for conciliation come into conflict with those relying on confrontation in the struggle for Irish independence. The book traces the experiences of Paul Doherty, an Irishman immigrant. In a story that raises important issues of race, class, religion, sex, violence, and secret societies, Doherty struggles to look for conciliation rather than confrontation, bringing him into conflict with his great friend and fellow Irishman, Will, who is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The theme of confrontation and conciliation continues through the relationships Doherty has with the English arch racist Maurice Whitehouse and the English philanthropist William Harding. The book also draws upon comparisons between life in rural Ireland and the dark streets of an English industrial town of the late nineteenth century as it builds to a powerful conclusion of romance and violence.

About the Author

Terence Dillon, grandson of an Irish immigrant, was born in a mining village in Yorkshire. He has led a successful life in education as a headmaster, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools (HMI), and as an international educational consultant. He now lives in the Cotswolds, where he is a member of Creative Campden, a governor of a primary school, St Catharine’s, and where he wrote this fictional story of Irish immigrants.