Down All The Days

Born in 1932, the son of Dublin bricklayer, Christy Brown was the victim of the athenoid variety of cerebral palsy. With the help of his family and Dr Robert Collism, he overcame his physical disability and won immediate fame with his best-selling novel about life in Dublin, Down All The Days. He was also the author of a second novel A Shadow in Summer and two volumes of poems, Come Softly To My Wake and Background Music. He died in 1981.

Part and parcel of a large and boisterous family, he is pushed around the streets of Dublin by his brothers; the small crippled occupant of a boxcar, silently witnessing the city's joys and woes. Tormented yet calm, he is the detached observer of life in the slums of forties and fifties, Dublin. 
 
Written with the fearless discipline that Christy Brown had to establish over his own body, Down all the Days displays his lyrical gifts for language and insight to the full.

Christy Brown

My Left Foot is Christy Brown's inspirational story of his early life, his battle against the restraints of cerebral palsy and his determination to learn to read, write, and paint, all with the aid of his left foot. 
 
This autobiography, published in 1954 when he was twenty-two, recounts his early life in Dublin &ndash; the poverty of his childhood, the support of his mother and his hope for a better life. Above all it describes his struggle to learn to read, write, paint and finally type, all with the toe of his left foot. Warm, honest and inspiring, this is a unique and captivating story of disability told by an extraordinary man. 
 
'Riveting, funny and inspiring' Irish Times 
 
'His book, over and above the extraordinary achievement it reveals, is a testament to one man&rsquo;s courage, a hope for others' Kirkus Reviews

My Left Foot

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