Biography of Charles Garavan

Charles Garavan was born in Galway in 1970 and educated in Castleknock College and at University College Dublin where he studied law, graduating with a 2.2 honours degree. During his time in UCD he broke the World Record for the longest after-dinner speech speaking for 46 hours and 10 minutes.

After graduation Charles enrolled in the Kings Inns and was called the Bar in the Michaelmas term of 1994. From 1994 to 1999 he practised as a barrister in Dublin. After leaving the Bar he worked as a taxation consultant and has lectured and written on a broad range of taxation issues.

During his time at the Bar Charles became interested in memory improvement techniques and began to research the various types of techniques in existence and their psychological and scientific basis. Although he had been a reasonably successful student in the past, during 20 years of full-time education he had never considered how his memory worked or what was the correct approach to learning factual information. He began to develop a system of memory improvement which could be used not to perform parlour tricks such as memorising random numbers or playing cards, but that would be of use for the purpose of studying for exams.

In September 1998 Charles sat the Irish Taxation Institute final examinations. Using the techniques he had developed over the previous three years, he achieved first place in Ireland in the exam overall as well as first place in two of the four papers. He did the same amount of work as he did for his University and Bar Exams. The difference in results came from the way that he studied.

In February 2001 Charles founded the Memory Academy to teach his memory improvement and learning techniques to other examination students and to business executives. Since that time thousands of students, foreign langauge learners and business people have attended his seminars and courses around Ireland.

Charles competed in the World Memory Cup in Weinheim, Germany in August 2004 finishing in 5th place overall. Although performing well below what he is capable of in practice, he still managed to memorise:

• a 1,290-digit binary number in 30 minutes (personal best: 1,800 digits)
• a 162-digit decimal number in 5 minutes (personal best: 240 digits)
• a shuffled deck of cards in 1 minute 59 seconds (personal best: 58 seconds)

Charles' first book, How Best to Learn and Remember for Leaving Certificate was published in January 2005 and can be purchased from this website.