Their love for each other is both innocent and passionate and they each go to great lengths to avoid the other with Meggie marrying the dashing Luke O’Neil. In amongst the pain and the loss, however, is a quite, quite beautiful love story that blossoms between Meggie and Ralph de Bricassart, a young and ambitious Catholic priest. The backdrop of Drogheda is captivating and a character in itself and the prominence of love, death and disaster within the tale makes it easy to see why similarities have been drawn between The Thorn Birds and Gone With the Wind. RELATED: Review: Peaches for Monsieur le Cure - Joanne Harris Telling the story of the Clearly family and their life on their aunt’s homestead, Drogheda, in Australia, it follows red-haired Meggie from early childhood to old age. It wasn’t a title I had heard of prior to beginning my challenge, though I have been assured by my mother than my granny had read and adored it in her time. One of the great joys of reading my way through the BBC’s Big Read is coming across books I otherwise might not have – The Thorn Birds is one of these.

And given that Gone With the Wind is my favourite book I was instantly sold. Any hopes of a ‘quick read’ were quickly dispelled – each of the books was about 500 pages – and, so, unable to go on length, I began reading the blurbs.īefore getting to the description of The Thorn Birds, however, a quote on its cover from The Observer caught my eye: ‘It’s easy to see why this stunning tale has been called the Australian Gone With the Wind’. Off the top of my head, three titles sprung to mind – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Thorn Birds – and so one of the very kind booksellers found me all three. Despite having a number of books in London that I was yet to begin, I had forgotten to take any of them to Bath and so, with a ninety minute train journey ahead, I decided to invest in one of the BBC’s Big Reads. On a recent trip to Bath, I found myself with an hour to spare after a client meeting, and thus decided to peruse the shelves of its rather lovely Waterstones.

The thorn birds novelist mccullough