FAQ

All of Europe struggled to rebuild after the catastrophe of the Great War. However the 26 southernmost counties of Ireland had also suffered huge loss of life and material damage in the "Revolutionary Period" of on/off conflict between 1916-23. This ended with the implementation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, allowing the six most pro-British north-eastern counties to remain part of the UK in return for a slightly increased measure of the self government granted in the 1912 Home Rule Bill for the rest of the country. One of the key concessions made by the British government was financial independence but actually the rest the British Isles had been subsidising Ireland for decades. Poverty and mass emigration, ills long blamed by Irish Nationalists on the Union with Britain increased massively, Connemara actually suffering a famine in 1925 which was comprehensively covered up by an embarrassed Free State government. Things only began to improve in the late twentieth century when the country joined the European Economic Community/European Union which subsidised it just as Britain had (although Britain would still have to bail the Irish Republic out to the tune of billions of pounds during the 2008 financial crisis).

Angela's Ashes is based on a 1996 memoir by Irish-American author Frank McCourt. The book was adapted for the movie by Australian screenwriter Laura Jones. The book was followed by two more books, 'Tis (1999), which picks up where Angela's Ashes ends and details his new life as an American immigrant, and Teacher Man (2005), which focuses on the challenges of being a teacher.

Angela McCourt is Frank McCourt's mother. Born in Limerick, Ireland, Angela Sheehan marries Malachy McCourt from northern Ireland while they are living in New York, where Frank is born. When Frank was four years old, the family returned to Limerick. Frank's memoir focuses on how the family, headed by mother Angela (his father was an alcoholic), was forced to survive by begging, stealing, charity, and living on the dole.

In an interview, Frank McCourt explained that the book was called Angela's Ashes because the two books, Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, were supposed to be one book. As it worked out, however, they were split into two books, with Angela's Ashes ending with the word "'Tis", and 'Tis ending with Angela's ashes being scattered. Frank has said her ashes went to the ancient cemetery in Ireland where all her ancestors were buried and also to Queens, NY, to her baby daughter's grave. Viewers of the movie have commented that, to them, the ashes may refer to all the Woodbines smoked by Angela, the ashes in the fireplace where she stared on the nights that the family had no food, or, more symbolically, to her children, including Frank McCourt, who are the "ashes" that Angela left behind her.

Consumption is an older name for tuberculosis.