Bill Long (writer)

Bill Long (28 April 1932 – 21 May 2010) was an Irish writer and broadcaster. He often featured on RTÉ Radio 1.^[1][2] He was also Ireland's longest surviving heart transplant patient.^[2]

Long was born a Catholic in Waterford in 1932. He lived in a thatched house with his immediate and extended family, including his mother, father, brother and his mother's parents.^[2] His father was a grower of vegetables.^[2] Long was fond of reading as a child, devouring Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Zane Grey, and encountering trouble at school while reading when he was supposed to be paying close attention to his religious studies.^[2] His time at a boarding school was funded by a family friend but he quit after two years.^[2] He attended a Congregation of Christian Brothers school in Tramore but quit that as well, at the age of 14.^[2] He married a wife, Peg, and they had two sons and two daughters.

After leaving school Long enlisted in the navy. He soon left that as well.^[2] He began reporting for the Cork Examiner, before transferring to a newspaper in Waterford and then onward to the Irish Press, followed by the Irish Independent and then The Irish Times and even briefly with Raidió Teilifís Éireann.^[2] He also worked in Revlon's public relations department. Long resided in London where Raymond Chandler was a next-door neighbour.^[2] The two shared in common a youth spent in Waterford so bonded well.^[2] Long also went on trips to the United States and South America.^[2] He met figures such as Thomas Merton and Katherine Anne Porter, the latter of whom encouraged him to write in earnest.^[2] So he left his job at Revlon.^[2] While writing he made radio documentaries to generate funds to feed his family.^[2] Among these are Singing Ark (which won a Jacobs Award) and the Dylan Thomas documentary Flowering Flood.^[2] He featured on RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany.^[2] Long was also a homiletics lecturer at National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM).^[2]

Bright Light, White Water, published in 1993, documented the history of every Irish lighthouse and their keepers off the Irish coast, with Long living inside Howth's Baily lighthouse while writing.^[2] He later had a heart attack and a heart transplant followed in 1994.^[2] The transplant and recuperation received public interest – RTÉ filmed a documentary and Long's book, Change of Heart, described what had happened and advocated increased donor awareness.^[2] He was able to write and edit further books, completing his first memoir shortly before his death in 2010.^[2]

• Bright Light, White Water (1993)
• Change of Heart (1994)
• Brief Encounters: Meetings with Remarkable People (1999)
• Voices of Connemara (2009), with Raymonde Standun.
• The Lamp and the Lullaby; tales from a rural childhood (memoir) (2010)

• Profile at New Island
• In One Life: The Bill Long Interview