Remembering German writer Heinrich Böll in Achill

This week a group of writers and old friends are gathering at Heinrich Böll's cottage on Achill Island to discuss the German writer's works.

It is happening to honour the centenary of the birth of the novelist, who was born in Cologne on December 12, 1917. After his Abitur he served his time in the book trade before spending six years in the Wehrmacht. He was drafted into the army and fought in the French and Russian campaigns.At the end of the war he came back to Cologne and studied German literatrue. 

In 1949 his first book, The Train was on Time' was published.

It was in Achill that Böll wrote Irisches Tagebuch - Irish Diary.

He wrote of the Nazis: "The Nazis revolted me, repelled me on every level of my existence: conscious and instinctive, aesthetic and political."

Heinrich Böll described the Irish as "the only people in Europe who never set out to conquer."