ABSTRACT
Gorton, like the other Manchester neighbourhoods where the Irish community was concentrated at the time, was a far from salubrious place. Jim survived through a combination of joining two institutions: the Catholic Church and the monastery in Gorton on the one hand, and on the other the army. He went on to fight in the Boer War, where he developed his sense of adventure and risk-taking. The dislocation and brutality of modern urban existence brought about by enforced immigration, particularly of my great-grandparents’ and grandparents’ generations, was felt by my parents – whose job it was to make sense of it all, and to have lives that, through slow acceptance and gradual integration, aspired to be ‘normal’ for their children: my three brothers and me.
