Description
What does it mean to leave the place you call home, and build a new life somewhere else?
Born on Achill Island in the late 1940s, Mike Gallagher grew up in a close-knit rural community shaped by family, faith, hard work and tradition. It was a world where neighbours looked after one another, life followed the rhythms of the land and sea, and emigration was simply part of everyday life.
Then, while still a schoolboy, Mike lost his father. His childhood changed overnight, and before long he was forced to leave the island he loved and begin a new life in England.
In A Journey Through Time, Mike recalls with warmth, honesty and vivid detail the world he left behind, and the very different world he encountered in 1960s Britain.
His story unfolds during a time when thousands of young Irish men and women crossed the Irish Sea in search of work, security and a better future. For many, that meant long hours on building sites, motorways and major construction projects, often in dangerous conditions and far from home. Yet alongside the hardship came friendship, humour, resilience and the strong bonds of an Irish community determined to make a life for itself.
Mike remembers the boarding houses, the pubs that became places of refuge and connection, and the men and women who struggled to build new lives in an unfamiliar country. He also reflects on the loneliness, uncertainty and difficulties that came with being far from family and home.
But Mike’s own journey takes an unexpected path. From uncertain beginnings in England, he builds a successful career in the National Health Service, rising from junior surveyor to senior leadership. His experiences offer a unique window into a changing Britain, and into the opportunities that perseverance, hard work and determination can create.
Part memoir, part social history and part tribute, A Journey Through Time is more than one man’s story. It is a portrait of a generation of Irish emigrants whose labour, sacrifice and resilience helped build modern Britain.
Above all, it is a story of loss and belonging, hardship and achievement, family and friendship, home and emigration—and of the enduring truth that, however far we travel, a part of home travels with us.
