Emily Hourican can clearly remember the moment she realised Guinness was more than just a drink. Growing up with Irish parents in Brussels, Garech de Brún visited their family home through mutual friends. He is Oonagh Guinness’s son and a prominent figure on the Irish arts scene, notably founding Claddagh Records.

“Only afterwards someone said: ‘His mother is Oonagh Guinness’. That was the first time I sort of made the connection that Guinness wasn’t just a drink, it was also people,” Emily explains.

“Then of course when you realise that the name pops up in every intersection of Irish and British life – business, politics, art, fashion and architecture. You look at the different branches of this family and you say: ‘Gosh, who are they all and how do they all fit together?’”

Going on to work as a journalist, she found herself drawn to writing about the Guinness family, particularly the Guinness girls

Moving back to Ireland (she was born in Belfast) to undertake an English and history degree in University College Dublin (UCD), Emily was particularly interested in 20th century Irish and British history. Going on to work as a journalist, she found herself drawn to writing about the Guinness family, particularly the Guinness girls.

The Guinness girls were Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh, daughters of Ernest Guinness. They lived right throughout the 1900s. Aileen, the eldest, was born in 1904 and died in 1999. This interesting period in Irish and British history, coupled with the fact that they were colourful characters on the London social scene, ultimately led Emily to think they would be the perfect premise for a book.

That book, The Glorious Guinness Girls, was released a few weeks ago. It follows the Guinness girls from their early lives in Dublin, through to being presented to society in London and on to their first marriages, focusing primarily on the 1920s.

It’s like that brilliant meeting point between what is unalterable fact and then what you can play around with

It’s written as historical fiction – in that the structure of the historical events are correct – but some artistic licence is taken with the story. The narrator, Fliss, is a fictional character. Having previously written both fiction and non-fiction, Emily enjoys mixing the two.

“It’s like that brilliant meeting point between what is unalterable fact and then what you can play around with. It’s like a kind of structure within which you’ve freedom,” Emily says.

Privilege

With her love of history, Emily was interested in portraying how the Guinness girls interacted within the changing world they inhabited. Before moving to London, they lived in Glenmaroon House in Castleknock, Co Dublin.

Although both the War of Independence and the Civil War were raging at the time, and many Irish people were extremely impoverished, the Guinness girls were insulated from this through their wealth. Emily wanted to convey the divide between rich and poor.

“That really did truly strike me, the fact that they lived here, but they had no part in what was happening in this country. They were immune to it by their privilege.”

I forked the roads – well the roads did fork for women – and the Guinness Girls didn’t go the route of female independence and autonomy, owning your own destiny and taking your place in the world of work

Also, particularly in the context of World War I and the period of women’s liberation it sparked, the book shows how the Guinness girls didn’t become particularly involved in the movement, whereas Fliss does.

“I forked the roads – well the roads did fork for women – and the Guinness Girls didn’t go the route of female independence and autonomy, owning your own destiny and taking your place in the world of work.

“They remained in this quite acrostic form of life that their privilege led them into. That is the role of the muse, the patron, the hostess – not the doer or the creator. Whereas Fliss goes the other route – she looks at what they have, she has a chance at replicating it and she doesn’t take it.”

Personal journey

Emily herself has had to overcome some tough hurdles in life. In 2015, she was diagnosed with mouth cancer, which she wrote extensively about at the time in a series of diaries for the Sunday Independent.

Looking back on the diaries, Emily feels it helped her process all the information being thrown at her.

Writing the diaries, they were so gloomy, but life was gloomy at the time

“It’s a whirlwind. You’re told you’ve cancer and if you’re me, you’re not expecting it, not remotely. It’s so discombobulating and the new stuff is fired at you at a rate that I couldn’t keep up with. I couldn’t get my head around it. I was stuck in my head going: ‘I have what? How do I have cancer?’

“Writing the diaries, they were so gloomy, but life was gloomy at the time. I would write one a week and I would at least feel, ‘I know where I am now, I kind of understand what has happened to me in the last week and I have some sense of what is coming at me in the next week.’”

It was also great to get correspondence from readers going through something similar, but while she is glad she did it, Emily wouldn’t be keen to look back on the diaries just yet. At the moment, she is focusing on writing the next instalment of The Glorious Guinness Girls.

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