The Boy in the Boat Paperback - 2013

Brian O'Raleigh was born into a chaotic Irish family in 1941 in the English seaside resort town of Blackpool. He attended St Joseph's College, until the age of 14 when he was expelled after a fight with a Christian brother. At the age of 18, accused of being involved in an IRA bomb threat on Blackpool Tower, he emigrated to Australia, just a few steps ahead of English justice. Arriving in Sydney he worked at a dozen different occupations, salesman, construction worker, bulldozer operator, factory worker, steel fixer and trade union official. After his first wife left him in 1967 - in a desperate attempt to do something decent with his life - he volunteered for the 6-Day-War in Israel. There he met his second wife, Carol, and for a while, stopped drinking. But on returning to London a year later, he became involved in the notoriously hedonistic life of 'The Swinging Sixties'. Excessive drinking, night clubs, parties, crime and the associated violence. Then, after organizing a gang raid on a London police station, he was forced to flee England once again, and, with police alerts at all airports in the UK, he took a small, French fishing boat to Calais. Carol met him there and together they journeyed through France, Germany, Austria, Belgrade, Bulgaria, Turkey, crossing the Bosphorus at Istanbul, before traveling through Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan, India and eventually, Australia. A year later, Brian began building a deep sea sailing boat hoping that this would set him free from the alcoholism he had despised in his father; but, after 4 years of failure and frustration, he suffered a major collapse and became suicidal. This proved to be the catalyst that began a lasting recovery. Brian began writing in 2005. His latest book: 'The Storyteller of Inis Mor' was reviewed by Frank O'Shea, literary critic for The Australian Irish Echo, who said: "O'Raleigh's new work: The Storyteller of Inis Mor, reminds one of the great Irish writers such as Sean O'Faolain and Benedict Kiely."