Retired businessman Mark McGaugh, 78, who came to this country from Mayo in the 1950s, has just written a book about how he made his fortune from cash registers, Gold In Them There Tills.
Mark, who is married to Helen with whom he has three adult children and five grandsons, originally started working in construction but a good head for figures saw him move on to other opportunities, eventually making his multi-million-pound fortune from the sale of cash tills.
Although he often returns to Mayo, his home, these days, is in Surrey.
He said of his memoir, which will be launched at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith next week: “My story stretches back over seven decades to post-World War Two and the social, political, and religious influences of that time in Ireland.
“I look at Ireland’s history of emigration and the effects felt in the United Kingdom of receiving hundreds of thousands of immigrants into their country.”
He says he will always be grateful to this country for giving him opportunities he could never get in his homeland.
There was “sometimes real and sometimes imagined prejudices against Irish people from English people,” he says adding that this continues through to today.
“But I can honestly say we were fortunate down the decades and I love where I now live, in a beautiful part of the Home Counties in Surrey although I genuinely believe that the morals and principles of those early years when growing up in the rural west of Ireland has been the basis of my whole life.
Mark McGaugh’s memoir ‘Gold In Them There Tills’ will have its London launch on Thurs, March 14 in the Irish Cultural Centre, 5 Blacks Road, Hammersmith, London W6 9DT from 7.30 pm. All are welcome.
