Good Times And Bad

'Good Times and Bad' recalls Séamus Martin's colourful life and tells fascinating stories about his childhood in a working class family. They moved house frequently from Dublin to Derry to Donegal and back to Dublin and he went to Gormanston College boarding school as a scholarship boy.

Before joining the Times, Martin had an eventful career. He worked as a sports commentator in the Irish Press and the 'Irish Independent', sports editor of the 'Sunday Tribune' and as a columnist in the 'Evening Herald'.

As Moscow correspondent for 'The Irish Time's, he was an eyewitness to the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Later, he covered the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the collapse of the apartheid regime and the arrival of democracy in South Africa and reported on Mandela's rise to president. Back in Ireland he was a senior editor in the thick of the financial crisis that nearly ended the Irish Times in 2002 and 2003 and writes frankly about that time.