THE meet of the Grallagh Harriers, who hunt much the same country as the Galway Blazers, at the Meadow Court Hotel near my hometown of Loughrea brought back memories as it is so close to the former home of film director John Huston, master of the Galway Blazers in the 1960s.

It was nothing unusual to see Huston’s house guests following the hunt by car. Hollywood film stars like Cary Grant, Spencer Treacy, Katherine Hepburn, Orson Wells, playwright Jean Paul Sartre or actor Paul Newman who bought a Connemara pony from Lady Anne Hemphill. Huston’s two children, Tony and Angelica, the star of the Adams Family and Prizzi’s Honour, hunted their Connemara ponies which were looked after by Paddy Lynch. They went to school in Loughrea. After school, they walked down to Mrs Tierney’s, whose son Martin was Huston’s butler in Abbey Terrace, for their dinner before being collected by their mother Ricki. Angelica penned a book on her time in Galway, A Story Lately Told.