The Banshee Of Kindlestown

Delia Barry FRI24FEB23

hen the first interview request arrived last October, it was certainly a novelty for 83-year-old Delia Barry to suddenly find herself on The Ray D’Arcy Show.

Ray wanted to know all about Delia’s fine knits – especially those sturdy jumpers – for The Banshees Of Inisherin. 

Little did she know that this was just the beginning of months of interviews and requests, bingo suddenly on the back burner as everyone from BBC’s Woman’s Hour  to The New York Times was on the blower.

Sure, The Daily Mail even flew over a journalist and a cameraman from London to interview Delia last week in her Kindlestown home. And next week, Germany’s RTL are sending their television crew over to visit the famous knitter “in her little village” of Greystones.

“It’s just been non-stop,” says Delia when we caught up this afternoon. “We’re getting calls and emails from all over the globe, and half the time, I keep thinking that someone must be having me on. But the interviews keep happening…”

Not that this bout of glitzy stardom is entirely new to Delia, given that her well-honed talents as a master knitter has seen her woolly wonders turn up in many a Hollywood film, including Dancing At Lughnasa and Little Women.

And now, it’s the turn of Martin McDonagh’s criminally-overrated Oscar fave, The Banshees Of Inisherin, Ms Barry’s latest creations donning the proud shoulders of leading men Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh

“It’s really all down to the film’s costume designer, Eimer,” says Delia. “She gave me my very first film job, with 1998’s Reign Of Fire, and ever since then, I’ve always been there whenever Eimer needs me…”

It was back in October that Esquire magazine proudly predicted that Banshee would become ‘the next great knitwear film…‘ Not that we can quite figure out what the last great knitwear film might have been.

“Sounds to me like someone has been drinking,” says Delia. “A lot. This is just very traditional knitting, and it’s been around forever. I worked from photographs of fishermen from the early 20th century along the west coast of Ireland, using a magnifying glass to get those stitches just right. I always like to get it just right.”

Sharing the costumes duties on the film with another talented octogenarian, 80-year-old tailor Denis Darcy,  the 83-year-old Delia’s favourite part of The Banshees Of Inisherin was the detail that came with watching it on a big screen. “You could really see the stitches in the cinema,” she laughs.

Having lost both her sister and her husband, Paddy, to cancer, Delia always asks film producers to donate her fee to Greystones Cancer Support. “They do incredible work,” she says, “and they helped us enormously when Paddy was ill. So, I know they can do a lot more good with the money than I ever could…”

What a woman. 

Just how this four months of living famously has been treating Delia, we decided to find out…

You can catch our August 2017 interview with Delia here, and her July 2016 My Greystones entry here. And you can donate to Greystones Cancer Support here.