Personal Life and Interests
Murphy never married. In 1968 she gave birth to her only child, Rachel, fathered by Irish Times journalist Terence de Vere White. Her decision to raise her daughter alone was described as "a brave choice in 1960s Ireland" by The Sunday Business Post, although she said she felt safe from criticism because she was in her 30s and was financially and professionally secure. Following Rachel's birth, she spent five years as a book reviewer before returning to travel writing.
Murphy lives in Lismore with five dogs and three cats. She is a patron of Sustrans, a British charity for sustainable travel and of the Lismore Immrama Festival of Travel Writing.
In 2009 Murphy appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives, nominating Freya Stark as a Great Life, supported by expert John Murray VII of the publishing family.
She plans to join an aid flotilla sailing for Gaza at the end of March 2011.
Read more about this topic: Dervla Murphy
Famous quotes containing the words personal, life and/or interests:
“... it is a rather curious thing to have to divide one’s life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one’s official duties are at an end.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)