Publisher's Synopsis
In 1947... some three million Irishmen lived and worked in the British Isles; only a few less than the ones they left behind in Eire. Of the Irishmen then residing in London, the majority lived and worked in Shepherds Bush, Kilburn or Paddington... where the drink was Guinness and the language, Irish. '...A Very Irish Funeral' relates the hilarious misadventures of the Delaneys; those boys left behind, and their long-time absentee father, Pat 'Paid-on-Friday-Broke-by-Monday', who lives, works and drinks his Liffey Water in Shepherds Bush. When Pat is persuaded to die for the Cause so that a shipment of dynamite, stolen from a quarry in the Mendip Hills, deep in sleepy west country England, can be smuggled back to Ireland hidden in his coffin, a chain of unexpected mayhem is triggered on both sides of the choppy Irish Sea. Co-incidentally, poor Doctor Ophus Bloomflower, a German Jew working in the newly formed National Health Service dishing out free wigs and spectacles in Kilburn, is planning a quiet and peaceful holiday in Ireland, but instead finds himself joining the cortege. Unfortunately for all concerned, there is more than one coffin on its way back home to Harney.
