Frank McCourt is back on the best-seller list thanks to the huge publicity surrounding his tragic death from cancer.

Angela's Ashes debuted at number five in the paperback non-fiction section in The New York Times list on Sunday.

It is an extraordinary development, and one that Frank would no doubt have enjoyed enormously. It appears his death will ignite sales in one of the finest books ever written about an Irish childhood.

The book is eerily topical again, with the recent church sex scandals and the incredible abuse of young people that took place in Ireland in Frank's time. “What took you so long?” might well be Frank's response to what happened on the church scandal front.

When he wrote about it, of course, many were scandalized and demanded retractions. Funny how time has borne his version out.