The Raggy Boy Trilogy

Patrick Galvin’s celebrated trilogy is here brought together in one book. Song for a Poor Boy and Song for a Raggy Boy recount the author’s life in 1930’s Cork, including his early childhood and brutal suffering at the hands of the Christian Brothers.

The trilogy is completed with Song for a Flyboy, set during World War Two when Galvin serves with the RAF Bomber Command and finds himself posted to Sierra Leone, the Western Sahara and occupied Palestine.

Praise for Patrick Galvin:

'His wayward and unpredictable genius has thrilled and amazed and challenged us since he first began to publish in 1959, and since then songs, plays, poems and autobiographies have flowed from his fertile pen...In his wonderful poems the genius of this river city [Cork] with its bells and towers and hills and hidden lanes, finds its highest and purest expression' President Mary McAleese

'It [Song For A Poor Boy] is a little gem and one longs for more…a lovely book' Sunday Independent

Song for a Raggy Boy is also a major feature film, directed by and starring Aidan Quinn.