I’m publishing an extract this week from another book that was on the short list last year for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, awarded for a work “evoking the spirit of a place”. It’s from Call mother a lonely field by Liam Carson, a memoir of growing up in an Irish-speaking family in Belfast at the time of the Troubles.

The title, incidentally, is borrowed from a song by Jackie Leven, who was lead singer in the 1970s of the band Doll By Doll before going on to a solo career in which he collaborated with, among others, the crime writer Ian Rankin.