When Malachy McCourt left Limerick on a steam liner bound for New York in 1952, he envisaged himself working on the top floor of a shiny office building, where people would greet him with: “Good morning, Mr McCourt.”
“The actual fact was that I was a dishwasher,” he said. “That was about as far as I was expected to go because of my lack of education. I was 13 when I left school. You couldn’t get anywhere in Ireland unless you had the Leaving Certificate. I got none.”
He would make a life for himself in the United States, though not the one he’d imagined. Tall and stocky, with clear blue eyes, a soft brogue and a shock of red hair, he was known on