Desmond Fennell

Desmond Fennell was born on the Antrim Road in Belfast in 1929, the exact coordinate where a restless mind first entered the world before departing for Dublin. That brief Northern anchor gave his later life its strange breadth: he could leave nationalism, habit and pride behind because he had already crossed one border at three years old. The city did not need to be famous in his story; it only needed to be the place where the journey began.