Can My Pony Come Too?

''It''s always hot in Australia. And you can ride your horses to school and tie them up under a gumtree,'' my mother told us with a knowing smile, as we stared at her in awe.

Gathered on a cold, misty morning in their Georgian mansion on the shores of Lough Derg in depressed 1950s'' Ireland, with debts mounting, this seemed like a dream for the prominent Esmonde family, including the teller of th...