He immediately flew to Dublin, hired a car to drive the couple of hundred miles to Youghal and arrived home just before the doctor appeared.

NPR: Cockburn's 'Broken Boy,' a Memoir of Survival

Dr. John Gowen, a neatly dressed handsome man originally from England with a small practice in Youghal, arrived in his car at Brook Lodge two hours later.

NPR: Cockburn's 'Broken Boy,' a Memoir of Survival

We owned no car and Paddy had been driving me in a horse and trap to the Loreto convent, a red-brick building on a hill overlooking Youghal bay, where the nuns were slowly teaching me to read and write.

NPR: Cockburn's 'Broken Boy,' a Memoir of Survival

Kitty had taken me for a walk to Youghal to visit my first cousin Shirley Arbuthnot, one year older than me, who lived in Myrtle Grove, a Tudor mansion within the ancient town walls where my mother had grown up.

NPR: Cockburn's 'Broken Boy,' a Memoir of Survival

My mother, Patricia Cockburn, took my temperature and asked Paddy McMahon, an elderly man who looked after the walled garden and our small herd of sheep, to bicycle into the town of Youghal a mile and a half away, to get a doctor.

NPR: Cockburn's 'Broken Boy,' a Memoir of Survival