When she moved back to England, she attended the National Film School for four years and directed a one-hour documentary The Daisy Chain.
She currently writes a column for The Big Issue[6] and is adjunct professor at Barnard College[7] Columbia University, New York teaching creative non-fiction.
She is also Northern Ireland panel member on BBC Radio 4 Round Britain Quiz[8] She has five sisters and one brother, Barry Devlin who is bass player and vocalist in the Irish Celtic rock band Horslips.
Her sister Marie[9] is an editor and writer (Over Nine Waves, a collection of Irish myths and legends) who married the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.
[10][11] In 1967 Polly married Andy Garnett[12] an industrialist, philanthropist and writer of books including Steel Wheels, A Social History of Railways[13] and Lucky Dog,[14] a memoir.