{"id":197228,"date":"2025-11-24T07:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T07:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197228\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T07:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T07:21:13","slug":"it-was-a-racket-but-it-was-a-racket-rte-started-myles-dungan-on-freelance-contracts-losing-late-date-and-moving-into-fiction-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197228\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It was a racket. But it was a racket RT\u00c9 started.\u2019 Myles Dungan on freelance contracts, losing \u2018Late Date\u2019 and moving into fiction writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nThe broadcaster reflects on losing his father, some brutal episodes at school, and RT\u00c9\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Historian and broadcaster Myles Dungan. Photo: Mark Condren\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/313e6616-7ba9-4c78-b24b-0237957999ee.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Historian and broadcaster Myles Dungan. Photo: Mark Condren<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">For the most part, Myles \u00adDungan is reliably sardonic and self-deprecating. The writing of his excellent new novel, The Red Branch, a historical espionage thriller about \u00ad\u201cFenians who are at it again\u201d in 19th-century San Francisco, sprung from \u201cthe joy of making shit up\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">His agent, Jonathan Williams, liked it enough to \u201cbecome its midwife, bless his Welsh dragon red cotton socks\u201d. Dungan\u2019s previous, long-ago attempt at fiction, a co-written (with Jim Lusby) crime thriller called Snuff, he refers to as \u201cmy secret past\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The broadcaster reflects on losing his father, some brutal episodes at school, and RT\u00c9 Historian and broadcaster Myles&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,24320,23942,1181,24556,15913],"class_list":{"0":"post-197228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-pat-kenny","13":"tag-people-culture-magazine","14":"tag-rte","15":"tag-rte-radio-1","16":"tag-ucd"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115603471326871925","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}