With a long ponytail, a posh accent, and draped in Irish tweeds, Garech Browne was one of the more eccentric descendants of Arthur Guinness.
From Luggala, his country estate in Wicklow, Browne played host to everyone from Mick Jagger and Samuel Beckett to Picasso and Pierce Brosnan and launched one of the last bastions of Irish traditional music in Claddagh Records.
Next month, five years after his death, his friend and collaborator James Morrissey will detail the life of “a man like no other” in a new book, Real to Reel: Garech Browne & Claddagh Records.
For Morrissey, a former music journalist and the current chairman of Claddagh Records, the book is not simply a recollection of an era gone by.
“I keep thinking