Author Herbie Brennan, seated, with novelist Ally Bunbury, writer Sebastian Barry and film-maker, Lenny Abrahamson

By Elizabeth Lee

IT’S not every day that you get an internationally-recognised author hanging out with an award-winning film producer in a rectory in Tullow, but it’s not every day that a magician launches his memoirs either!

An eclectic bunch of people attended the launch of Herbie Brennan’s life story ***Enchanted life: the memoir of a magician***, including some of his devoted followers, but also the award-winning author Sebastian Barry and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson. Local author Ally Bunbury and members of her family were also there to support their friend Herbie.

The author, now in his 80s, began his long career as a writer when he was 18 years’ old. He worked as a journalist, a magazine editor, an advertising copywriter, a novelist and author. He’s a prolific writer, having produced 116 books with sales of over ten million copies in 54 countries, according to his publicist Maurice Sweeney.

Sebastian, who is the only author to win the Costa Book of the Year twice, officially launched Herbie’s memoirs and paid tribute to his huge curiosity in life, magic and the paranormal.

Herbie has devoted much of his life to the study of magic and the paranormal. He was determined from an early age to become an accomplished practitioner of magic and conducted many experiments over the years, the results of which he reveals in this spellbinding book. He also writes wittily and affectionately about the many people who have populated his life, both those connected to higher

planes of existence and the often roguish larger-than-life characters he met in his career as a journalist.

In his no-holds-barred memoirs, he reveals what it’s like take part in magical ceremonies, what it’s like to have an outer-body experience and how to be attuned to strange energies.

“What you discover between the covers of this book will leave you spellbound. And every word of it is true,” said the press statement accompanying the book.

It is available in bookshops, online at www.sweeneyodonovan.ie and on Amazon for €20.