William Trevor talk at the library

WILLIAM TREVOR, novelist, playwright, and short story writer who died peacefully last November at his home in Somerset aged 88, is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language. And despite having lived in England since the 1950s he was known as one of the elder statesmen of Irish Literature.

Dolores McKenna, one of the foremost experts on William Trevor, was at Enniscorthy Library recently to give a talk on the great man and his work from her book William Trevor- the Writer and his Work - which was published in 1999. Dolores is a lecturer, critic and broadcaster and has written on a wide range of Irish writers. She knew William Trevor for over 30 years, did her Masters and PHD on him and was also asked by him to write his Biography. A reserved man with a wry sense of humour, Dolores describes him saying that he was keenly interested in people and what makes them do what they do.

William Trevor was born William Trevor Cox at Mitchelstown, Cork on May 24 1928. His father James William Cox, originally from Roscommon worked in the bank, and in the 1940s he served as Manager in the Abbey Square branch of Bank of Ireland, Enniscorthy.

The family lived over the bank for a short period and Trevor attended the Church of Ireland, Tate School in Wexford town. His short story Autumn Sunshine is set in Enniscorthy and tells the tale of Canon Moran, a Church of Ireland clergyman dealing with the death of his wife Frances and the arrival of his estranged daughter Deirdre and her ‘friend’ Harold from England.