The Influence of History in Children’s Fiction by Emily Hourican

I never saw much difference between loving reading and loving history. In both I found stories, characters, adventure, narrative – all the things that thrilled me as a child and still do. Irish history was a big part of my life growing up. Probably because I was an ex-pat kid – growing up as part of a European community in Brussels, Belgium. History was one of our links to ‘home,’ which was what we all called Ireland, even though only one of five siblings was actually born here. My parents were both obsessed by history, and had the knack of making it exciting and funny and relevant, rather than dull and done.

Many of the books I loved had historical events as a backdrop. Joan Lingard’s The Twelfth Day of July was one of my favourites, and Geoffrey Trease’s Cue For Treason (in which Shakespeare is a key character).

When I started writing Murder at the Ivy Hotel, there were so many things that inspired me. Not least was hoping to write the sort of book I wanted to see my then ten-year-old daughter reading – something gripping, but fundamentally still quite innocent. But history was in the mix too. Specifically the history that unfolded around Dublin city centre. As you walk around, history is everywhere here. There are bullet holes in Georgian columns and facades, rooms where secret meetings were held, houses where nation-changing documents were drafted and signed. And no end of street corners where battles took place.

There is the Royal College of Surgeons, which was granted a charter by George III, still educates doctors, and was occupied by Countess Markievicz during the 1916 Rising (for this, she was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted because she was a woman). There’s The Customs House, designed by James Gandon in 1781, then burnt by the IRA during the War of Independence in 1921.

These are the tips of a very large iceberg. The story of Irish independence is written all over the city (along with many older stories), and the men and women who fought for that are as much to be sensed in hotel dining rooms and long-established bars as in monuments to their bravery.

There is one hotel in particular – the Shelbourne, on St Stephen’s Green – that was a model for the Ivy hotel, even though the Ivy is obviously completely fictional. But I have always been so intrigued by the many layers of life in the Shelbourne – guests having tea, checking in and out, meeting friends for dinner, in rooms that were once used by Michael Collins to draft the first Irish Constitution, and then a few years later by the British army to shoot at the rebels in the park opposite. All that amazing jumble of ‘then’ and ‘now’ is something I find exciting. I think each layer adds to the overall sense of the place. The old stories sitting happily alongside the new ones.

I wanted the Ivy to have the same sort of deep-rooted presence. To be somewhere that ‘history’ wasn’t completely past, but rather part of the flow of everyday life.

I imagined Meredith and Macy being as comfortable with things that happened a hundred years before as with the events of today and yesterday. I felt sure they would be interested in the ways in which the old stories might inform and influence new ones.

Knowing something about what happened in a place for me always makes that place more interesting and exciting. It’s a sense of ‘anything can happen,’ because if you look back across the stretch of time – anything has happened!

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Murder at the Ivy Hotel

“A deliciously cosy and clever mystery with buckets of charm, and a cast of characters you can’t help but adore.” – Hana Tooke, author of The Unadoptables

Twelve-year-old Meredith and ten-year-old Macy feel like the luckiest girls around. The Ivy Hotel in Dublin is old, beautiful and beloved, with a tight-knit staff that feel like family, and they get to call it home.

Meredith and Macy’s mum is the General Manager, and their modest apartment is tucked away in a corner, but it has lots of perks. The girls make friends with long-term residents – like Colin, the quiet little boy who plays piano, and Agatha, the eccentric older lady who stays in a plush suite with her dog, Milo.

The girls love spying on fancy events, sneaky treats from the restaurant and knowing all the secret stairs and corridors that guests never see, where the staff move around invisibly, making sure everything runs like clockwork…

This is going to come in handy. Because within the cosy walls of the Ivy Hotel, there is also danger, intrigue and threat. Just as the hotel’s new owners arrive, ready to sniff out any excuse to make cuts and fire staff, the girls are faced with their biggest task yet: a murder to solve.