3934/ BBC Poet A5 Bookletdownloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/northernireland/bbcnistory/... ·...

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3934/ BBC Poet A5 Booklet 10/15/03 3:18 PM

travelling without passporttravelling without passport..."The light of imagination transcends decay." (Brian Patten,The Story Giant)

This exhibition celebrates the diverse and abundant talents of local writers whohave had an association with the BBC. It profiles the work of poets, playwrights,novelists and critics and acknowledges their contribution to broadcasting and widercultural and community life over almost 80 years of programme-making by the BBCin Northern Ireland.

Poets and Writers looks back to some of the defining personalities and achievementsof the past and forward to the creative possibilities that are being explored by anew generation of local writers. It chronicles a succession of social and technological

changes and also the recurring themes and pre-occupations of broadcasting in adiverse society. Whilst no such exhibition can offer a definitive summary of all that has

been accomplished, or work that is still in the making, what is presented here usefully illustrates the rangeand scale of material that the BBC has produced for local and Network audiences.

BBC NI has a long-established and unique role as a supporter of the arts. It has worked hard to encouragecreative excellence and remains committed to risk-taking and innovation, and to facilitating "thoseadventures of the spirit" that lie at the heart of all good broadcasting and literary activity.

Preserving the BBC’s past, whilst building on its legacy by seeking out different voices and audiences, willpresent inevitable challenges over the coming period. In all of this however, a key task of programme-makers and writers will remain the telling of stories that allow our imaginations to "travel without passportacross borders and time" and which connect us ever more fully with the complexities and excitements ofthe world that we share. This exhibition should make many such journeys possible. I hope that you enjoy it!

Professor Fabian MondsBBC National Governor for Northern Ireland

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radio memoriesradio memoriesThe programme is The Arts in Ulster, the year 1966. John Boyd with his hands full ofpaper rushes from behind the glass partition and into the studio to scold the panelfor not talking enthusiastically enough about the book under discussion. CharlesBrett is in the chair. Mercy Hunter, John Cowser and I make up the team. "It’s thebest thing to come out of this place for years," John insists. "Sound moreenthusiastic, for God’s sake!" And he is right of course. On a second take we singmore loudly the praises of Seamus Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist.

In the Sixties when my generation of writers was just setting out, John Boyd andSam Hanna Bell read our first publications, got to know us and invited us to write

scripts or contribute in other ways to their programmes. Sam’s broadcasts often beganin The Elbow Room over pints and chasers. But once we had waltzed across the road into BroadcastingHouse, the hilarity ceased. Behind the glass partition Sam changed (or changed back ) into a Presbyteriandisciplinarian, a perfectionist. These great men were a good deal older than us. Their encouragement andpatronage were blessings. Thanks to them the BBC played a crucial role in what is sometimes thought ofas a northern literary renaissance.

Is it possible to trace some kind of apostolic succession? Sam Hanna Bell and John Boyd’s predecessorsinclude the playwright Denis Johnston, whose combination of words and music and sound effects in pre-war plays such as Lillibulero pointed the way forward; and Tyrone Guthrie, the first voice to be heard on theNorthern Irish airwaves, the founding father of radio drama in London, before the world became his stage.Two other Ulstermen, Louis MacNeice and W. R. Rodgers, as well as being wonderful poets wereinnovative broadcasters, pivotal players in the Features Department of the Third Programme (now BBCRadio 3). MacNeice who died in 1963 gave his last interview to John Boyd here in Belfast.

As scintillating heir of Rodgers and MacNeice, Paul Muldoon is the most recent bard to work in the BBC.His ingenuity and magic brightened local radio for more than a decade. As is the case with most goodchefs, his recipes were often quite simple. The magazine programme Bazaar encouraged writers to dotheir own thing or try something entirely new. "I hear you’re trying to give up the fags. Would you like towrite about it? Five minutes, say?" Who could refuse? Part of the fun was wondering who else would bein the studio: John Hewitt sternly reciting some autobiographical sonnets, James Simmons crooning apolitical ballad or a love song. Bernard MacLaverty trying out a short story, Sam McAughtry sagely giving usa slice of life, John Morrow making Ulster laugh with some outrageous yarn. Stewart Parker, MedbhMcGuckian, Ciaran Carson, Frank Ormsby, Jennifer Johnston, Michael Foley – Paul brought us all togetheron the air and, without trying too hard, made Belfast feel like the centre of the universe. He also ensuredthat poems were read on the radio and books by local authors reviewed.

In the Schools’ Department Douglas Carson rejoiced in the example and achievements of Bell and Boyd,Rodgers and MacNeice. Over two decades I wrote for him one or two scripts a year based on Irishlegends. The thrill was in trying to communicate the spirit of these Iron Age tales through the 20thcentury electronic contrivance. I loved leaving in my scripts spaces in which the boffins of the RadiophonicWorkshop in Manchester would conjure up a giant’s stomach-rumbles or an underwater monster’s slashing

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tail. In The Bird of the Golden Land it was, for a change, the Billy White Jazz Trio who improvised soundeffects and tunes and cast the spell. Illustrated pamphlets for the pupils and teachers’ notes accompaniedour programmes. Douglas and I were indeed men with a mission. But the curriculum and the fashionchanged. By the end of our long adventure we were enjoying ourselves so much we didn’t really care ifanyone was listening!

For me producers and writers are what it is all about. It is inspiring nowadays to tune into new work byplaywrights still in their springtime – Daragh Carville, Gary Mitchell,Tim Loane, Damian Gorman. Moreseasoned dramatists such as Marie Jones and Graham Reid continue to adorn the schedules. The comedydrama series Two Doors Down by Annie McCartney looks like a healthy development. Two outstandingyoung novelists, Robert McLiam Wilson and Glenn Patterson, live in our midst, both of them skilledbroadcasters. In our small community poets seem to have handed over the baton to writers of prose, butfor the time being only, I’m sure. The watchword of the BBC’s first Director General Lord Reith was: "Thebest for the most." May the old curmudgeon never sound out of date. Easy-going disc-jockeying and chatmay have their attractions, but the ancient Greeks were surely right when they insisted: "The beautiful thingsare difficult."

Many years ago I toured the province as floor manager for an amateur talent show produced by thatmarvellous writer and devoted radio man, Maurice Leitch. I fraternised for the first time in my life withstand-up comedians, country and western singers and Ian Paisley impersonators – an experience I relished.I apologise, therefore, for not discussing the merely diversionary or, for that matter, the documentary. Thesegenres are taking over and can look after themselves. On the occasion of this exhibition of literaryphotographs I prefer to celebrate creativity and invention. One of the BBC’s greatest servants HuwWheldon put it this way: "It is through stories, overwhelmingly, that we learn to live in the world: and it isthrough stories that we learn to live with ourselves. It is no accident that civilisations are built on mythsand that religions are built on parables."

There’s a magical line in Ciaran Carson’s poem Hamlet: "the storyteller picks his way through the isolatedstars." Radio waves travel at the speed of light. My own time worn retelling of those legends fromprehistoric Ireland may just now be reaching a star in Orion’s belt. Who knows what receptive intelligenceis tuning in? "Time," Ciaran Carson says at the end of his poem,

Is conversation; it is the hedge that flits incessantly into the present,As words blossom from the speakers’ mouths…

Michael Longley

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(born 1940) HistorianBorn in Dublin and educatedat High School,TCD, QUB andthe University of Ulster. Aformer teacher and lecturer atBIFHE and QUB, he wasChairman of the CommunityRelations Council of NorthernIreland, 1996-2002. A prolificauthor whose works include A History of Ulster (1992)and Beyond the Studio:A History of BBC NorthernIreland (2000). A frequent panellist on BBC historyprogrammes.

(born 1962) NovelistA native of Bangor,he studied atOxford, and becamea journalist and laterdeputy editor of theCounty DownSpectator from 1979until 1995. His manysatirical crime novelsinclude Divorcing Jackand Cycle of Violence(both 1995).Divorcing Jack wasscreened on the BBC in 2000, and his other BBCfilms include the series Murphy’s Law (2001) andWild About Harry (2003). The zany character of hiswriting is exemplified in Mohammed Maguire (2001)in which the lead character is the son of an IRAcommander and a militant Egyptian fundamentalist.

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jonathan bardonjonathan bardon(1912-1996) HistorianFrom East Belfast, Beckett waseducated at RBAI and QUB.His many books include theclassic text, The Making ofModern Ireland (1966). Duringthe 1950s he and another RBAIhistorian, Professor TheoMoody of TCD, collaborated ontwo acclaimed series of history programmes for theBBC NI Home Service. Beckett was also a regularpanellist on Your Questions and a member of theRegional Council of the BBC. Several of hisbroadcast lectures were later published by the BBC.

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colin batemancolin bateman(1909-1990) Novelist andBroadcasterBorn in Scotland but raised inRaffrey, County Down, he studiedat Belfast College of Art. From1945-1969, he was a featuresproducer for the NorthernIreland Home Service(subsequently Radio BBC Ulster).He organised the OutsideBroadcasting Unit which vividly captured the folk life ofNorthern Ireland. His programmes included anatmospheric documentary recorded on Rathlin Island(1949). His novels include December Bride (1951), A ManFlourishing (1973) and Across the Narrow Sea (1987). Amemorable film adaptation of December Bride starringDonal McCann was released in Irish cinemas in the samemonth that he died. In 2001, BBC Radio 4 broadcastCarlo Gébler’s adaptation of December Bride. Bell’scommitment to outdoor broadcasting laid the foundationsfor the BBC’s rich archival holdings. In old age he recalledhow ‘people were so eager to tell us a story, to sing us a song.’

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(1912-2002) Producer and PlaywrightFrom East Belfast, he waseducated at RBAI, QUB andTCD. A teacher during the1930s, in 1947 he became aTalks Producer on the NorthernIreland Home Service, producing

Your Questions, the highly popularlocal version of Any Questions? He was the firstproducer of regular arts programmes on BBC Radio inNorthern Ireland. His documentaries profiled classicIrish writers from MacNeice to Heaney. He and SamHanna Bell commissioned Joe Tomelty to write TheMcCooeys. His best known play, The Flats (1971), waswritten shortly before he retired from the BBC in1972. In retirement, he advised the Lyric Theatre,edited its journal Threshold and wrote other playsincluding The Farm (1973) and The Streets (1977). Hismemoirs Out of My Class (1985) and The Middle of MyJourney (1990) offer a vivid portrait of his variousbattles against censorship and in defence of socialism in twentieth century Belfast.

(born 1969) PlaywrightFrom Armagh, he waseducated at theUniversity of Kent andthen lived in Paris beforereturning to NorthernIreland in 1994. A writerin Residence at QUBfrom 1999 until 2002, hecurrently teaches scriptand creative writing atQUB’s Seamus Heaney Centre for Irish Poetry.Tinderbox has produced two of his four stage plays,including his first, Language Roulette (1996), anexploration of post ceasefire violence. He won theStewart Parker New Playwright Award in 1997.Regenerations, a play set in a Belfast hotel, was firstbroadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2001. Hisadaptation of Dracula will be broadcast on BBCRadio 4 in December 2003. He is currentlypreparing a new play for Tinderbox, Vote! Vote! Vote!The Alternative Assembly Elections.

(born 1948) PoetFrom Belfast, Carson’s first language was Irish. He was educated at St Mary’sCBS and QUB. Until 1998, he was Literature and Traditional Arts Officerwith the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He has recently been appointedto a professorial chair in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at QUB. Hismany collections of verse include The Irish for No (1987), Belfast Confetti(1989) and War Music (2003). His acclaimed translations of Dante’s Infernoappeared in 2002. A keen musician, his prose works include Last Night’s Fun(1996), an evocation of Irish traditional music. A regular contributor to artsprogrammes on BBC Radio 4, he recalled his childhood in a 1984 broadcastfor the BBC Radio Ulster series Today and Yesterday in Northern Ireland. InOctober 2003, he was awarded the Forward Prize for his collection.

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(born 1952) Poet and Essayist Born in East Belfast and educated at Orangefield Boys’ School, the University ofUlster and NUI Galway (where he lectured for many years). He is Director of theOscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing at TCD where he lectures in English. Recentcollections include The Morning Train (1999), Stray Dogs and Dark Houses (2000) andLake Geneva (2003). He edited a Blackstaff anthology The Younger Irish Poets (1982 &1991). Founder of the literary magazine Krino. He is a frequent contributor to artsand social affairs programmes on the BBC and wrote and presented a recent BBCdocumentary on the legacy of Yeats, A Last Inheritor.

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gerald dawegerald dawe

(born 1932) Actor and BroadcasterFrom East Belfast, he waseducated at Methodist Collegeand QUB. His name issynonymous with the longrunning Z Cars in which heplayed Sergeant Lynch. Othermemorable televisionperformances included the roleof Norman Martin in the Billy plays by GrahamReid. His production of Sam Thompson’scontroversial Over the Bridge for the Empire Theatrein 1960 was a classic. His publications include avolume of poetry, Domestic Flight (1998), and shortstories, Home and Away (2002). In July 2003, BBCRadio 4 featured some of his short stories(including his Irish settings of French folktales) in abroadcast from a farmhouse at the Ulster Folk andTransport Museum.

james ellisjames ellis(born 1924) PoetPseudonym of PatrickJoseph O’Connor. Born inthe Lower Falls, his familymoved to New York whenhe was five. He attendeda seminary in Manhattanfor two years beforedeciding to return toBelfast in 1946. In 1957he won the AE Award andin 1981, the Poetry Ireland Award. He wrote poetryfor nearly thirty years before his first collection, By theBlack Stream (1969) was published. In 1974, heedited a controversial anthology of poems about theTroubles, The Wearing of the Black. Recent collectionsinclude Red Earth (1996) and Semper Vacure (1999).His time on the Upper West Side was recalled in aBBC documentary produced by Paul Muldoon, Hell’sKitchen was a Ghetto (1980).

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(born 1954) Novelist and Broadcaster Dublin born son of Edna O’Brien. He studied at York University and the National Film andTelevision School and worked as a scriptwriter and producer before turning to full-time writing.Now living in Fermanagh, he has published travelogues, novels and children’s fiction. His firstnovel, The Eleventh Summer, was published in 1985. A travelogue, The Glass Curtain (1989)explored society in Fermanagh after the Enniskillen bomb. His BBC television programmeshave included the series, Plain Tales From Northern Ireland (BBC TWO, 1993) and a Channel 4documentary on the use of the baseball bat during the Troubles. Put to the Test, his BBC ONE

profile of Ballysillan pupils as they sat the 11 plus (broadcast in 1998) won the Royal TelevisionSociety Best Regional Documentary Award in 1999. His radio work includes an adaptation of Sam

Hanna Bell’s December Bride, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2001. His most recent novel is August 44 (2003).

carlo geblercarlo gébler

(born 1929) PlaywrightBorn in Omagh but raised in Derry, he was educated at St Columb’s and at Maynoothand St Joseph’s College, Belfast. A school teacher for ten years, he became a full-timewriter in 1960. He has lived in Donegal since 1967. Four of his early plays werebroadcast by the BBC NI Home Service: A Sort of Freedom and To This Hard House (both1958), The Doubtful Paradise (1960) and The Blind Mice (1963). As none of these havebeen published, the radio transcripts are particularly valuable. Later plays includePhiladelphia Here I Come (1965 and broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster and the Third

Programme that year), Translations (1981, awarded the Ewart-Biggs Prize) and Dancing atLughnasa (1990). Many of these were first performed at the Abbey Theatre, as were his

translations of Russian classics. His first televised play for the BBC was The Enemy Within (1965). The BBCRadio Ulster series, Explorations, interviewed him about his plays in 1968.

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damian gormandamian gorman

(born 1961) Playwright and BroadcasterBorn in Newcastle, County Down. A prolific writer who has scripted and directed manyprogrammes for the BBC, including the verse documentary Devices of Detachment andseveral dramas for children. He has also adapted works by Padraic Colum and MichaelMcLaverty for BBC radio productions. In November 2002, BBC Radio 3 transmitted hisdrama, Last Days of Love, which was commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of theBelfast Arts Festival. Founder of An Crann, an archival project which collected first-handaccounts of the Troubles. He has published several volumes of poetry.

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(1900-1971) Broadcasterand Theatre ProducerThe first voice heard on theinaugural broadcast of theBBC’s Belfast station, 2BE, on15 September 1924. Guthriewas born in England but spentmuch of his childhood atAnnaghmakerrig, the familyhome in Monaghan. After his death, it became acentre for creative artists. He was educated atOxford before joining the BBC for two years as aproducer. His productions for 2BE included dramasby Yeats and others. His own play, The Flowers AreNot For You To Pick (1930), transformed approachesto radio drama. His career was spent largely in theEnglish theatre but included several seasons inCanada. A memoir, A Life in the Theatre, waspublished in 1960. In Speak Your Mind, broadcast in1969, he was candid about Northern Ireland’sproblems. BBC NI broadcast a wide-ranginginterview to mark his seventieth birthday in 1970.

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(1892-1964) Broadcaster and TravelWriterBorn and educated in Larne, heworked in Liverpool beforebecoming an actor with theUlster Literary Theatre inBelfast. Hayward acted in early2BE productions by theStation’s Players. As a teenager, John Hewitt listenedto an early 2BE broadcast of Hayward’s poems in1924. Hayward also presented the Double SidedRecords series which featured vignettes in dialect.His performances of Ulster folk songs werehighlights of radio broadcasting in the 1920s.Among his own compositions was the ballad TheHumour is on Me Now. His publications included anovel, non-fiction works such as The Story of the IrishHarp (1954) and many topographical volumes,several of which featured illustrations by RaymondPiper and JH Craig.

richard haywardrichard hayward

(1907-1987) Poet and Art Critic Born in Belfast and educated at Methodist College and QUB. He was Keeperof Art at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery from 1930 until 1957. A directorof the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, 1957-1972, he was later thefirst Writer in Residence at QUB, 1976-79. His Collected Poems appeared in1968 and a further compilation, The Selected John Hewitt, was published byBlackstaff in 1981. He also published art monographs including Art in Ulster(1977). Ancestral Voices:The Selected Prose of John Hewitt was published in theyear he died. He often took part in arts broadcasts on BBC Radio Ulster. In1975, his childhood memories of Belfast featured in the BBC Radio Ulster seriesToday and Yesterday in Northern Ireland. In 1982 the BBC broadcast an interviewwith him. He is commemorated by an annual summer school, based until

recently in his cherished Glens of Antrim.

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(born 1930) NovelistBorn and educated in Dublin but has lived in Derry since 1979. Her parents were theplaywright and broadcaster Denis Johnston and the Abbey actress Sheelagh Richards. Herearly novels evoked the lost world of the Big House during the Irish revolutionary era of1912-23. Her best known works include The Captains and the Kings (1972), How ManyMiles to Babylon? (1974 and dramatised by Derek Mahon for BBC TWO in 1982), Shadowson our Skin (a Booker Prize nomination in 1977 and likewise dramatised by Mahon for BBCtelevision in 1980) and The Railway Station Man (1984). The Old Jest won the WhitbreadPrize in 1979 and a film adaptation The Dawning was screened in 1988. Her early work onBBC Radio Ulster included an abridged version of The Gates (1974), adapted in 1975 bySam Hanna Bell and read by Kate Binchy.

jennifer johnstonjennifer johnston

(born 1939) PoetFrom Bellaghy in County Derry, Heaney later lived inBelfast before moving to Wicklow in 1972 andsubsequently to Dublin. He was one of the foundermembers of the Belfast Group, a circle of young poetsorganised by Philip Hobsbaum in the 1960s. His firstvolume, Death of A Naturalist, appeared in 1966 and wasenthusiastically reviewed on BBC Radio Ulster’s The Artsin Ulster. In 1982, he was appointed Boylston Professorof Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and from1989 to 1994 was Oxford University Professor ofPoetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literaturein 1995 and has twice received the Whitbread Prize (forThe Spirit Level in 1996 and for Beowulf: A New Translationin 1999). His selected prose, Finders Keepers, waspublished in 2002. His work has featured in many BBCprogrammes, among them Happy Birthday Seamus(1999) which marked his sixtieth birthday. His manycollaborations with David Hammond included the 1970sschools’ series Explorations in which he introduced pupilsto the riches of twentieth century Irish literature. Classic

BBC broadcasts include a 1972 profile marking thepublication of Wintering Out and a 1987 reading at Queen’s

from The Haw Lantern.

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(born 1951) PlaywrightRaised in East Belfast, she hasworked with the GroupTheatre and the Charabanc,Replay and Dubblejoint theatrecompanies. Stones in his Pockets(1999), which was hugelysuccessful, was translated into25 languages and won the IrishTimes/ESB and Laurence OlivierAwards. Her tribute to Ruby Murray (2001) wasalso popular and toured Northern Ireland. It wasbroadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2002. In 2003, shecontributed to Territory, as part of the BBC RadioUlster series The Land.

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aker (1905-1967) Poet

Born near Inniskeen, CountyMonaghan. He lived in Dublinfrom 1939, the year in which AGreen Fool was published. Hewrote for several literarymagazines and also lectured atUCD in the late 1950s. Two ofhis best known works were theepic poem of rural life, TheGreat Hunger (1942) and a drama, Tarry Flynn (1948).He recalled his Monaghan childhood in a 1974edition of BBC Radio Ulster’s Today and Yesterday inNorthern Ireland. In 1977, Edna Longley presented aBBC Radio Ulster documentary to mark the tenthanniversary of his death. In 1979, BBC TWOscreened a documentary made by BBC NI’sReligious Affairs staff, Where Genesis Begins, whichexplored the religious influences on his work.

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“To found A castle on the air requires a mint Of golden intonations and a mound Of typescript in the trays.What was in print Must take on breath and what was thought be said.”

Louis MacNeice


(born 1919) Novelist andShort Story WriterFrom Dromore, County Tyrone,he was raised in Omagh andeducated there and in Laois andDublin. He worked in Dublinfrom 1945 until 1964 when hemoved to the USA. He laterlectured in UCD and wrote forthe Irish Independent and the New Yorker. His workincludes fiction, short stories and memoirs. Proxpera(1977) and Nothing Happens in Carmincross (1985)presented grim depictions of the Troubles in ruralUlster. Drink to the Bird (1992) pays an autobiographicaltribute to inter-war Omagh. His Collected Storiesappeared in 2001. He has been interviewed on manyBBC Radio Ulster programmes, including Lifetimes(1978), and Public Versus Private (1980), the most recent,by Kate O’Shea, for Artsextra. In the 1950s, Sam HannaBell commissioned Kiely to make a radio profile ofWilliam Carleton, based on his classic biography, PoorScholar (1947).

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benedict kielybenedict kiely(born 1933) Novelist andBroadcasterFrom Muckamore, CountyAntrim, he studied at StranmillisCollege, and taught in Belfastfor six years. He joined BBCNI as a radio features producerin 1962 and moved to the BBCin London in 1970. He left theBBC in 1989. His novelsinclude The Liberty Lad (1965) and Poor Lazurus(1969), both of which were banned in the Republicof Ireland. His television plays for the BBC includeRifleman (1980), Guests of the Nation (1983) andChinese Whispers (1989).

maurice leitchmaurice leitch

(1898-1963) Novelist and AcademicBorn in East Belfast and educated in England. After service in World War I, hestudied at Oxford and lectured in medieval literature there and at Cambridgeuntil his death in 1963. His rediscovery of his Christian faith occurred in 1931.From 1941 to 1944, he recorded a series of religious broadcasts for the BBC (abestseller when published in 1952 as Mere Christianity). His last BBC feature wasa talk about The Pilgrim’s Progress, broadcast in 1962. His children’s novels remainenduringly popular. A CS Lewis tourist trail in East Belfast features his statue anda mural based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). BBC NI televisedMoore Sinnerton’s documentary marking the centenary of his birth, The Man, theMyth and his Wardrobe in 1998.

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(born 1964) Screenwriter and ActorBorn in County Antrim andeducated in Cork and Belfast.An actor, after leaving QUB, hewas a founder member ofTinderbox Theatre Company in1988, and was its artistic

director until 1996. Scripted Outof the Deep Pan (1996) - a BBC TV

comedy about Belfast food (and other) mafia.Directed Dance Lexie Dance in 1996 (a BBCNorthern Lights film nominated for an Oscar in1997). Other television work has included thepopular series, Teachers, on Channel 4. During 2002,the Tinderbox production of his satirical farce,Caught Red Handed, toured Ireland. BBC Radio 3transmitted his first radio drama, The Tunnel, in 2003.Another drama, I Can See Clearly, is scheduled forBBC Radio 4 early in 2004.

tim loanetim loane

(born 1940) Literary Criticand Cultural CommentatorA Dubliner who moved toBelfast in 1963. She was aProfessor of English at QUBuntil 2002. Prolific authorwhose works include studies ofLouis MacNeice and EdwardThomas. Editor of the BloodaxeBook of 20th Century British andIrish Poets (2000). Longstanding contributor toFortnight, the Irish Times and the TLS. Doyenne of theQueen’s English Society where many of the poetsfeatured in this exhibition first read their work. Haswritten and presented documentaries for BBC RadioUlster and BBC Radio 3 including one on PatrickKavanagh (1977). Reviews books regularly for BBCarts programmes and has been a panellist on BBCRadio 3’s Nightwaves.

edna longleyedna longley

(born 1932) NovelistNative of Belfast, educated at Bloomfield Collegiate and in Scotland. A full-timewriter since 1963, she has written 50 novels, including 37 for children.The Kevinand Sadie series (The Twelfth of July, Across the Barricades, and Into Exile) becamea classic evocation of teenage love and angst across the sectarian divide in1970s Belfast. She received awards from the Scottish Arts Council for AfterColette (1993) and Tom and the Tree House (1998). In Today and Yesterday inNorthern Ireland, broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster in 1987, she recalled herchildhood in Ballyhackamore. She featured in a BBC Radio 4 profile in 1991.

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(born 1939) PoetBelfast-born and educated. Aclassics graduate of TCD. ArtsCouncil administrator from 1971to 1991. Active with Heaney andother emerging poets in theBelfast Group formed by PhilipHobsbaum in the early 1960s.

His poems illuminate the nightmaresof the Western Front and the Troubles

and the beauty of the Mayo landscape. Recent prize-winning volumes include Gorse Fires (1991) and TheWeather in Japan (2000) which won the HawthorndenPrize and the TS Eliot Prize. He received the Queen’sGold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and the Wilfred OwenAward for Poetry in 2003. His most recent work is achapbook of war poetry, Cenotaph of Snow. A long-timecontributor to BBC literary programmes produced byBell, Boyd and Muldoon, he also collaborated withDouglas Carson on educational programmes in the1970s. Corner of the Eye, a profile of his life and work,was screened by BBC NI in 1988.

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michael longleymichael longley(born 1950)PlaywrightFrom Sailortown inBelfast, he left schoolat fifteen. During the1980s, he wasresident writer at theLyric Theatre and atthe University ofUlster. Many of hisplays were firstwritten forcommunity dramagroups. His bestknown work includesDockers and The History of the Troubles Accordin’ to myDa. BBC Radio Ulster has broadcast his features onthe history of Sailortown. His plays for BBC Radio 3and BBC Radio 4 include Needles and Pins, TheClearance of Audleystown and Pictures of Tomorrow(previously staged at the Lyric).

martin lynchmartin lynch

(born 1923) Broadcaster and MemoiristFrom Tiger’s Bay in North Belfast, he was educated at St Barnabas’ School. Heleft school at fourteen and served in the RAF during World War II. He workedin the Department of Agriculture before becoming a full-time writer. Hispublications include short stories, travelogues and several memoirs includingMcAughtry’s Belfast (1981), McAughtry’s War (1985) and On the Outside LookingIn (2003). Down In The Free State (1987) was a wry tour of the Republic. In1996 he became a member of Séanad Eireann. A familiar voice on Talkback andother BBC Radio Ulster programmes, he has presented many series includingMcAughtry’s Country and Good Company. His features for BBC television includeWalking the Stones.

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(born 1934) NovelistDublin-born but raised inCavan. Taught in a Dublinschool until the banning of hissecond novel The Dark (1965)led to his dismissal. Thecontroversy was an importantchapter in the history of literary

censorship in the Republic. Hethen moved to London and the USA

before settling in Mohill in County Leitrim. His laterwork includes the semi-autobiographical TheLeavetaking (1974), Amongst Women (1990 andshortlisted for the Booker Prize) and his collectedshort stories (1992). The Rockingham Shoot, a dramaof rural Ireland in the 1950s, was broadcast on BBCTWO in 1987. A televised adaptation of AmongstWomen, (co-produced by BBC and RTÉ) wasscreened in 1998. His recent novel, That They MayFace the Rising Sun (2002) was reviewed on BBCTWO’s Newsnight Review programme.

john mcgahernjohn mcgahern

(born 1950) PoetFrom North Belfast, she waseducated at Fortwilliam andQUB. She has held writers’residencies in QUB,TCD andseveral American universities.Her collections include TheFlower Master (1982), CaptainLavender (1995) and The Faceof the Earth (2002). She hastranslated Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poetry into English.Currently on the staff of the Seamus Heaney Centrefor Poetry, QUB. Recent work has explored thelegacies of Gregory Peck and Robert Emmet. HerBBC NI programmes have included The Wreck of theHesperus – an autobiographical evocation of Belfast(1986). Her contributions to Arts programmes onBBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 included discussing

the impact of the ceasefires in Simon Armitage’sStanza (1995) and Paul Muldoon’s Coming to

Terms (2000).

medbh mcguckian

(born 1952) Broadcaster and Poet From Tyrone, McAuley wasbrought up in the Glens ofAntrim. He has published fourvolumes of poetry includingVeronica (1994) and children’sstories. His book programme,You’re booked, was a mainstay ofBBC Radio Ulster and he wasalso a long-time presenter on Your Place and Mine.A prolific photographer, some of his portraits featurein this exhibition.

leon mcauleyleon mcauley(born 1948)Broadcaster andNovelistBelfast-born writer, andfrequent contributor toArts programmes on BBCRadio Ulster. Her firstnovel, Desire Lines, waspublished in 2001. Thethird series of her comedydrama, Two Doors Down,was broadcast on BBCRadio 4 in 2003. She has recently completed asecond novel, Your Cheating Heart.

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(born 1953) PlaywrightFrom Buncrana in CountyDonegal, McGuinness has livedin Dublin for many years. Helectured in English at MaynoothUniversity and is currentlyWriter in Residence at UCD.Observe the Sons of UlsterMarching Towards the Somme(1985) and Someone Who’llWatch Over Me (1992) were widely acclaimed andwon many awards. Plays broadcast on BBC TWOinclude Scout (1987) and The Hen House (1989)which starred Tony Doyle and Sinead Cusack andwhich won an International Television Award. Hiswork has been profiled on many BBC artsprogrammes including Kaleidoscope. He has alsoadapted plays by Ibsen, Chekhov and Lorca and haspublished several volumes of poetry. A BBCproduction of Observe the Sons of Ulster wastransmitted in November 1990. The cast includedIan McElhinney and Adrian Dunbar.

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frank mcguinnessfrank mcguinness(born 1942)Novelist andShort StoryWriterFrom NorthBelfast, MacLavertynow lives inScotland. Hisnovels Lamb andCal werememorablyadapted for film in1983 and 1984. ABooker Prizenominee in 1997for Grace Notes, hismost recent novel is The Anatomy School (2001). Hispublications also include short stories and children’snovels. Work broadcast on the BBC includes MyDear Palestrina, a BBC NI production for Playhouseon BBC TWO in 1980.

bernard maclavertybernard maclaverty

(1904-1992) Short Story Writer and NovelistBorn in County Monaghan but moved to Belfast as a young child. Educated at StMalachy’s College and QUB. He was a mathematics teacher from 1928onwards, and later became headmaster of St Thomas’s on the Falls Road.During the early 1960s, he encouraged a staff member, Seamus Heaney, towrite. His own early work included Call My Brother Back and Lost Fields. Manyof his short stories and novels were republished in the 1980s. A Stewart Parkeradaptation of his story, Aunt Suzanna, was broadcast on BBC NI in 1984. Anappreciation of McLaverty by Heaney was broadcast on BBC in 1970.

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(1907-1963) Poet and BroadcasterBorn in North Belfast, his early years were spent inCarrickfergus. He was educated at Oxford and was a classicslecturer at Birmingham and London Universities until WorldWar II. His first poems were published in 1929. Autumn Journalappeared in 1939. From 1941 until 1961, he was a BBCscriptwriter and producer in the famous Radio FeaturesDepartment. His career there is documented in BarbaraCoulton’s Louis MacNeice in the BBC (1980). His dramaticfantasy, The Dark Tower, was broadcast in 1947 and featuredmusic by Benjamin Britten. His literary links with Ulster, and hisfriendship with Sam Hanna Bell and John Boyd, opened up newrelationships between the BBC in London and Belfast. In 1946he collaborated with WR Rodgers to present City Set on a Hill,a BBC NI Home Service programme marking the 1500thanniversary of the establishment of the first church in Armagh.During the 1950s, he produced many travel features for theBBC.

(born 1907) Novelist and Children’s WriterBorn in Dublin and educated at St Andrew’s University. After university, she moved toBelfast to care for her father, an ailing Presbyterian minister. She was a secretary on theBelfast Telegraph, 1929-33. When her children were reared she began to write radiodramas. Her first BBC radio play was The Dear Ruin (1947). A Child in the House, initially apopular radio drama, was later published as a novel (1955). She also wrote The Carlisles, aserial commissioned after The McCooeys ended in the mid-1950s, but which failed to win afollowing. She was a member of the BBC’s Regional Council. Best known as a children’swriter, she has written over forty novels. They include the popular adventure, The Battle ofSt George Without (1966). Of the ten books written for adults, most explore thefrustrations of middle class Protestants in Belfast. The best known are Tea at Four O’Clock and The MaidenDinosaur (1964) which includes a comic account of its poet heroine being interviewed on BBC NI.

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(1888-1959)Clergyman andBroadcasterFrom Drumragh, the‘Bard of Tyrone’ waseducated inDungannon, Galwayand Belfast. Hebecame aPresbyterian ministerin 1913. Most of hisministry was inTyrone. He became alecturer at MageeCollege in 1932. From 1935 onwards, his scriptsenlivened early broadcasting in Northern Ireland andincluded a dialect version of A Midsummer’s NightDream and a dramatised novel of seventeenth-century Tyrone, Planted by a River. His dialect series,Ulster Speaks, (1955) was published by the BBC andbecame a bestseller.

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wf marshallwf marshall

(born 1965) PlaywrightGary Mitchell was born in Rathcoole, North Belfast, where he still lives. He leftschool at 15 and began writing at 26. His plays have focused on the tensions ofurban loyalism after the ceasefires. Tearing The Loom (1998), an exploration ofradical weavers' experiences during the 1798 rebellion, departed from this settingbut likewise wrestled with divided Protestant allegiances. He has won a numberof prizes for his plays including the Pearson Best New Play Award (Trust), theGeorge Devine Award and the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award forMost Promising Playwright (The Force of Change). His screen adaptation of As TheBeast Sleeps was transmitted on BBC TWO in 2002, and won the Belfast ArtsAward for Television. Suffering, a short film which Gary also directed, won BestShort at the Belfast Film Festival. He has further screenplays in development.

Two new plays will be performed this Autumn: Loyal Women at the Royal Court inLondon, and Deceptive Imperfections at the Belfast Festival in Autumn 2003.

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(born 1941) PoetFrom Belfast but raised inGlengormley, Mahon waseducated at RBAI and TCD. Hetaught in Ireland, Canada and theUSA for some years and alsoworked in London as featureseditor of Vogue and as literaryeditor of the New Statesman.His Collected Poems waspublished in 1999. His many translations from Frenchinclude versions of Molière’s The School for Husbandsand The School for Wives (both1986). He has edited anumber of anthologies including (with Peter Fallon) ThePenguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (1990). Hisadaptations of Jennifer Johnston’s novels, Shadows onOur Skin and How Many Miles to Babylon?, werescreened on BBC TWO in 1980 and 1982. The Cry(co-authored by Mahon and Christopher Menaul andbased on a short story by John Montague) was

screened on BBC ONE in 1984.

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(born 1930) Novelist and BroadcasterA native of Belfast, he left schoolat fourteen to work in theshipyards. He later soldfurniture and insurance and wasan administrator with the ArtsCouncil of Northern Ireland

until his retirement in 1994. Hisbooks include Northern Myths (1979),

The Annals of Ballyturdeen (1996) and Pruck. A Life inBits and Pieces (1999), a collection ofautobiographical pieces. As a singer andinstrumentalist, he was a frequent performer onListen Awhile to Me, a BBC Radio Ulster folkprogramme produced by Maurice Leitch during the1960s. Brian Barfield and Paul Muldooncommissioned his stories and essays for Bazaarduring the 1970s. Published in 1977, The Confessionsof Proinsias O’Toole, was adapted for radio that yearin a BBC production by Paul Muldoon. He haspresented various BBC Radio Ulster programmes onthe writer’s craft, including Plain Writing and Getting ItWrite.

john morrowjohn morrow

(1921-1999) NovelistThe son of a North Belfastdoctor, he was educated at StMalachy’s College. After servicein World War II and post-warwith the United Nations inPoland, he emigrated to Canadain 1948, where he worked as ajournalist and writer. He movedto the USA in 1959. Among hisbest known novels are The Lonely Passion of JudithHearne (1955 and filmed in 1989) and The Emperorof Ice-cream (1965), both of which faithfully evokedhis native city. In 1985, he was interviewed aboutBlack Robe on BBC Radio Ulster, while in 1996Roisin McAuley interviewed him on BBC NI’s 29Bedford Street. His 1956 novel set on the AntrimRoad in Belfast, The Doctor’s Wife, was read by ZaraTurner on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime in mid-2003.

brian moore

(born 1929) PoetBorn in New York, but spent his childhood with aunts on a Tyrone farm. A lecturer atUCC from 1972 until 1988. His prolific output includes the epic The Rough Field(1972) and a memoir of his childhood, Company (2001). He edited The Faber Book ofIrish Verse in 1974. In 1998, he was the first poet appointed to the Ireland Chair ofPoetry which rotates between QUB,TCD and UCC. BBC Radio Ulster has broadcastadaptations of his work including Paul Muldoon’s 1979 production of his short storyDeath of a Chieftain, and Derek Mahon’s 1984 version of another story The Cry. Hischildhood in rural Tyrone was recalled in The Omagh Road, as part of the BBC RadioUlster series Today and Yesterday in Northern Ireland.

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nuala ní dhomhnaillnuala ní dhomhnaill

(born 1952) PoetBorn to Irish doctors in Lancashire, she was brought up in the Kerry Gaeltacht and educatedthere, in Limerick and at UCC. She lived in Holland and Turkey before returning to Ireland.She currently holds the Ireland Chair of Poetry (which rotates between QUB,TCD andUCC). While she writes exclusively in Irish, her vivid readings and empathetic translations ofher work by Heaney, Longley and Muldoon have made her work highly accessible. Her firstcollection was An Dealg Droighin (1981) and recent works include Cead Aighnis. Pharaoh’sDaughter (1990) and The Water Horse (1999) are two of the translated editions. A frequent

contributor to BBC Radio Ulster’s Blás, she has also scripted Fionn and the Fiery Monster, anepisode of BBC Radio Ulster’s Today and Yesterday in Northern Ireland which described how Finn

MacCool became the leader of the Fianna. She contributed to the BBC Radio 3 feature, Yeats’ Legacy, in 1997.

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(born 1951) Poet and BroadcasterBorn in Portadown and raised near Moy. On graduatingfrom QUB he worked as a producer with BBC RadioUlster from 1973 to 1985 and with BBC television 1985-1986. Two BBC NI series he presented in the 1970s,Faces of Ireland and Irish Poetry, made classic literary textsand the work of emerging writers accessible to a wideraudience. Many of the writers featured in this exhibitionfirst became familiar radio voices on his arts programme,Bazaar. In 1989, BBC TWO screened Monkeys, his playabout John De Lorean. He moved to the USA in 1987,and has since held a chair in creative writing and poetryat Princeton University. He is currently the OxfordUniversity Professor of Poetry. He won the TS EliotPrize for Poetry in 1994. A volume of collected verse,Poems 1968-98, was published in 2001. His recentpoetry revisits his childhood.

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frank o’connorfrank o’connor(1903-1966) Short Story WriterA pseudonym of Michael O’Donovan. Born and educated in Cork City, he served on the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War. He was a librarian, journalist and university lecturer beforeturning to full-time writing. His classic memoir, An Only Child, was published in 1961. His first BBCbroadcasts were made during World War II. Across St George’s Channel (December 1940) was apen-picture of the London Blitz and he had to get the (neutral) Irish government’s permissionbefore recording it in a Dublin studio. Later Home Service talks during the 1940s focused onYeats, Joyce,AE and Cú Chulainn. The Northern Ireland Home Service transmitted adaptationsof his short stories in the early 1960s. On the day after his death in March 1966, BBC RadioUlster broadcast a tribute by John Boyd, a close friend. Maurice Leitch’s adaptation of Guests ofthe Nation (1931) was broadcast on BBC in 1983. O’Connor’s birthplace in Cork was opened as a writer’s centre inSeptember 2003. When the BBC sought to recapture its Edwardian atmosphere in a film about his childhood in thelate 1950s, his former neighbours refused a request to temporarily remove their new television aerials!

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(born 1932) NovelistFrom County Clare, she was educated there and inGalway and Dublin. She qualified as a pharmacistbefore moving to London in 1959. Her early novels,The Country Girls (1960) The Lonely Girl and Girls in TheirMarried Bliss (both 1963) were classic evocations ofCatholic girlhood, and were initially banned in theRepublic of Ireland. Recent work has included playsand a biography of James Joyce. In 1976, her shortstory, Love Child, produced by Paul Muldoon, wastransmitted on BBC Radio 4. During 2001, BBC Radio4’s Book at Bedtime featured Girl With Green Eyes andMrs Reinhardt.

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(born 1918) Theatre ProducerBorn in Cork andeducated in Meath. Sheworked with the NewTheatre Group in Dublinbefore moving to Belfastin 1947. She was a co-founder of the LyricTheatre in 1951, which

was based in her SouthBelfast home until 1968 when

it moved to Ridgeway Street. From 1952 until 1955,she was a Labour councillor for the Smithfield Ward.She directed over two hundred productions for theLyric before retiring to County Wicklow in 1977.Her memoirs, Never Shake Hands With The Devil,were published in 1990. Her many BBCcontributions include a 1966 reminiscence for UlsterToday on the Lyric’s early productions.

mary o’malleymary o’malley

(born 1947) Poet and EditorBorn in Enniskillen, hehas taught English atRBAI since 1971.Editor of The HonestUlsterman (1969-1989), and of variousanthologies includingPoets from the Northof Ireland (1979 and1990) and The Hip

Flask: Short Poems FromIreland (2001). He has

published several collectionsof poetry including The Ghost Train (1995). Frequentcontributor to BBC NI radio programmes includingCauseway, Poetry Now and Passing The Time.

frank ormsbyfrank ormsby

(1900-1991) Novelist and Short Story WriterBorn in Cork and educated there, at UCD and Harvard University. The son ofan RIC man, he joined the IRA and later served on the anti-Treaty side duringthe Civil War. His experiences during these upheavals informed his firstcollection of stories, Midsummer Madness (1932). He lectured in England andthe United States, 1929-33, and was founder and editor of the literary journal,The Bell, 1940-46, and Chairman of the Arts Council of Ireland, 1956-59. Hepublished many short stories (the collected edition was published in threevolumes, 1980-83), novels, memoirs (including the classic Vive Moi!) andbiographies of prominent historical figures, ranging from the Great O’Neill toCountess Markievicz. BBC Radio Ulster programmes included With GreatPleasure (1970) in which he narrated his favourite prose and verse, Talking ofChildhood (1978) in which he and Denis Johnston recalled early influences, andThe Planet of the Years (1979), an adaptation by Paul Muldoon.

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(born 1961) Novelist From Belfast, he was educated at Methodist College and the University of EastAnglia. He is a former Writer in Residence at Lisburn, Craigavon and severalBritish and Irish universities. Currently based in the Seamus Heaney Centre forPoetry at QUB. His five novels have charted youth culture in Belfast against thebackdrop of the Troubles and Ceasefires. His first, Burning Your Own (1988),which depicted Belfast in August 1969 as seen by an eleven year old, won theRooney Prize. His most recent work is No 5 (2002). His Study Ireland: Poetryseries was broadcast on BBC TWO in 1999. A programme on Louis MacNeiceis scheduled for transmission on BBC NI in 2004.

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(born 1956) PoetFrom Gort a Choirce in theDonegal Gaeltacht,O’Searcaigh was educatedat the NIHE, Limerick andat NUI Maynooth. He haspublished eight volumes ofpoetry. His work has beentranslated into manylanguages and his awardsinclude the Sean O’RiordainPrize and Duais Bord na Gaeilge. Na Buachaillí Bána(1996) was notable for its eroticism. His SelectedPoems 1975-2000 were published in 2002. Hiswork has been broadcast on the BBC and he hasalso contributed to Irish language programmesincluding Iris Aduaidh. He still lives on his mountainfarm in Donegal but travels widely. Recent work hasbeen inspired by his time in Nepal. A BBC NIprofile, File an Phobail (the poet of the people), wasscreened in 1994.

cathal o’searcaighcathal o’searcaigh(1941-1988)PlaywrightFrom East Belfast, hewas educated atAshfield Boys’ Schooland QUB. He was ateacher for six yearsbefore becoming afull-time writer.Three of his playsaddressed thelegacies of history:Northern Star (1984),Heavenly Bodies(1986) and Pentecost (1987). Catchpenny Twist(1971) was the first full length television playproduced by BBC NI. Other televised workincluded I’m A Dreamer, Montreal (1979) and TheKamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner (1980). He iscommemorated by an annual awards scheme tohonour new Irish playwrights.

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(born 1942) PlaywrightFrom NorthBelfast, she waseducated at theGirls’ Model andat QUB. Writerin Residence atthe Lyric Theatre1983-84 and atthe Young Vic inLondon, 1988-89. BBCproductions have

included The Last ofA Dying Race (for radio

in 1986 and on television in 1987) and My Name,Shall I Tell You My Name? (broadcast 1987). She hasalso adapted novels by Victor Hugo and Mervyn Wallfor stage productions. A collection of her plays, Teain a China Cup, was published in 1997.

christina reidchristina reid

(born 1945) PlaywrightFrom the DonegallRoad in South Belfast,he left school at fifteen.After some years in thearmy and working in ahospital, he studied atQUB and taughthistory for a time untilbecoming a full-time

writer in 1980. Several ofhis plays draw on his ‘Village’

childhood in exploring the impact of the Troubles onfamilial relationships. These include the acclaimedtrilogy of Billy plays by BBC NI (1982-1984) whichlaunched Kenneth Branagh’s career. Other BBCplays have included a series of six short plays, Ties ofBlood (1985) and You, Me and Marley (1992). ThePrecious Blood, screened on BBC NI in 1996, starredJames Ellis and Amanda Burton.

graham reidgraham reid

(born 1949) Poet and Critic Born in Leeds but spent his childhood off the Ormeau Road in Belfast. Educated atAnnadale Grammar School, University of Hull and University of Oxford. A TS EliotPrize nominee in 1994 for Walking A Line, his works also include Fivemiletown (1987),The Hillsborough Script (1987, a satirical drama) and The Invasion Handbook (2002).Currently lectures at Oxford University. A frequent BBC panellist on NewsnightReview and its predecessor Late Review, his work has also featured on New Poemsfrom Ulster and Poetry Now. His first play, All the way to the Empire Room, wasbroadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1983.

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(1933-2001) Poet and MusicianEducated at Foyle and Londonderry College, Campbell College, Belfast and LeedsUniversity. Founder of the Honest Ulsterman magazine in 1968 and the Poet’s House (acreative writing centre based first on Islandmagee and then in Donegal). His collectionsincluded Late but in Earnest (1967) and From the Irish (1985). From the late 1960s, hewas a regular contributor and scriptwriter for schools’ programmes on BBC Radio Ulster.His ballad, Claudy, remains one of the most haunting evocations of the Troubles. Itfeatured in his 1972 BBC programme about Northern Ireland, Why doesn’t someone

explain?, co-presented with Harry Barton.

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(born 1945) Journalist andBroadcasterFrom the North-West, she is acolumnist with theIrish News. Afrequentcontributor toBBC Radio Ulsterand BBC RadioFoyle programmes,including Sunday

Sequence and What’sWest? She has

presented From Darkness toDawn and Mind Your Manners. She has interviewedwriters such as Jennifer Johnston (1984) for BBCRadio Foyle. During the late 1990s, she contributedto the BBC Radio 4 series, Letters from Ireland.

anita robinsonanita robinson(1909-1969) Clergyman andBroadcasterBelfast-born Presbyterianminister and ‘Romantic Calvinist’.He was ordained in 1935, andwas minister at Loughgall inCounty Armagh until he joinedthe BBC in London in 1946.He later lived in Suffolk, Essexand California. His works included Europa and theBull (1952), a recording of which was also published.His Collected Poems were published posthumously(1971). He scripted City Set On A Hill, a programmeproduced by Louis MacNeice to mark the 1500thanniversary of the first Christian church in Armagh(1946) for the Northern Ireland Home Service. InThe Return Room, first broadcast at Christmas in1955, he revisited his East Belfast childhood in aprogramme that included contributions from DenysHawthorne and Harold Goldblatt. It was regardedas the Belfast station’s best post-war feature. Hisradio conversations with and about Irish writers(published by the BBC as Irish Literary Portraits, 1972)are regarded as a landmark in broadcasting.

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(1911-95) Playwright andActorBorn in Portaferry,County Down.Employed as a house-painter on leaving schoolat twelve, he laterfounded and managedthe Ulster GroupTheatre, 1939-1951. His

first play, Barnum Was Right,was originally a radio comedy.

Among his most successful plays was All Souls’ Night(1948). Radio versions were broadcast in 1950 and1964. He wrote and acted in The McCooeys, whichbegan in 1949 and attracted a huge listenership. Aserious car accident in 1954 greatly restricted hisacting career. His short stories featured on the BBCNI Home Service during the 1950s. His work, TheSinging Bird was the first BBC NI television play to bebroadcast in colour in 1971.

joseph tomeltyjoseph tomelty

(born 1928) Novelist andShort Story WriterBorn William Trevor Cox inCounty Cork. Educated at StColumba’s College and TrinityCollege, Dublin. He was ateacher and a sculptor beforehe began writing. A prolificnovelist and playwright, he haswritten many radio andtelevision plays. BBC adaptations of his publicationsinclude The Ballroom of Romance (1972, adapted forBBC TV in 1982), Beyond The Pale (1981, televised1989), August Saturday (broadcast 1989), Events atDrimaghleen and One of Ourselves. His fiction haswon many prizes including the Hawthornden andthree Whitbread Awards, and he holds honorarydegrees from several Irish and British universities.The Property of Colette Nervi was broadcast on BBCRadio 4 in 1999.

william trevorwilliam trevor

(1916-1965) PlaywrightBorn in Belfast, at fourteen he became an apprentice painter at Harland and Wolff.Sam Hanna Bell commissioned him to do radio features on the shipyards. His firstpiece, Brush in Hand, was transmitted in 1956, the same year that he wrote what wasto be his best known play, Over the Bridge. It was a classic portrait of tensions amongthe shipyard’s workforce. The controversy surrounding the play postponed its Belfastpremiere until Jimmy Ellis staged it at the Group Theatre in 1960. The NorthernIreland Home Service broadcast a version in 1965. A profile of Thompson, written andnarrated by Sam Hanna Bell, was broadcast in 1961. His last play, Cemented With Love(1966), was televised after his death.

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(born 1941) Children’s WriterAlso publishes under thepseudonym Catherine Sefton.Born in Belfast during the Blitz,he was raised in Newcastle,County Down. He worked asa boiler stoker and was aprofessional footballer withFulham before becoming a full-time writer, initially ofadult thrillers. Many of his books convey thetensions of present day Northern Ireland. Hischildren’s fiction has included ghost stories andpicture books for younger children. Among his mostsuccessful works are In a Blue Velvet Dress, Emer’sGhost and Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? His scripts forchildren’s television and radio, include BBC NI’s OnePotato,Two Potato and Hurley Burley. A BBC RadioUlster profile was broadcast in 1972, while hisNewcastle childhood, featured in a 1989 edition ofToday and Yesterday in Northern Ireland.

martin waddellmartin waddell

(1891-1977) Novelist and BroadcasterBorn in England, her family home was in Kilkeel. After service with the RedCross in World War I, and as a civilian searcher with the Ulster SpecialConstabulary in the early 1920s, she was active in the British Fascists and theUlster Protestant League until the early 1930s. From the mid-1930s on, she wasa novelist and broadcaster. Her thrillers generally featured the post-war world ofthe County Down gentry and included Fortune Must Follow (1937) and Not QuiteSo Black (1948). Her series of short dramas, Special Powers, were broadcast onthe Belfast station in 1939. She presented the BBC NI Home Service quiz show,Up Against It, between 1946-60, and its television successor in the early 1960s.

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(1889-1965) Novelist andAcademic Born in Tokyo andeducated at VictoriaCollege, QUB andOxford,Waddellbecame a medievalscholar. Her onlynovel was PeterAbelard (1933). Anearly play, The Spoilt

Buddha, was performedat the Grand Opera

House in 1915. She has been the subject of twoBBC NI documentaries and the BBC Archive holds a1955 interview in which she discusses her work.

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(1865-1939) PoetBorn in Dublin and raised there, and in Sligo and London. His first poems werepublished in 1886 and his first play, The Countess Cathleen, appeared in 1892. Hewas one of the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre (later the Abbey) in 1899.The Wind Among The Reeds (1899) and Responsibilities (1914) were significant pre-war collections marking his engagement with political change and socialresponsibility. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. From 1922until 1928, he was a Senator in the Irish Free State Oireachtas. The Tower (1928)and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) included some of his finest verse.One of the first dramas broadcast by 2BE in Belfast was his 1894 verse play, TheLand of Heart’s Desire, produced by Tyrone Guthrie in 1924. His other BBCperformances have been chronicled in Roy Foster’s recent biography Yeats: Arch Poet(2003). Radio was the perfect medium for this advocate of spoken verse. Theclassic Yeats broadcasts from Belfast included a radio version of Oedipus, which waspreceded by a talk about the play’s history. Yeats was paid thirty five guineas for this 1931 broadcast. For theBBC in London (whose fee, fifteen guineas, was less generous than Belfast’s!), he made three programmes in1937. In the first two of these programmes, he selected middlebrow poems (by Newbolt, Chesterton and dela Mare) and demonstrated how the declaiming of poetry could appeal to all. The last of the threeprogrammes was broadcast in October 1937 and was his final BBC performance. It featured his renditions ofhis own early favourites, including Innisfree and The Fiddler of Dooney.

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"I place my hope on the water in this little boat of the language… Not knowing where it might end up"

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

(translated from the Irish by Paul Muldoon )


contacts

creditscreditsText: Jane Leonard Additional research: Lynda Atcheson

Francis Jones Gordon Lucy Angela Reid

Design: Coppernoise CommunicationsFraming: John Orsi and Jay Large, Canvas

BBC NI wishes to thank all of those who have assisted in the development of this exhibition,including Edna Longley, Michael Longley, Fergus Hanna Bell, Douglas Carson, Sophia Hillan, staff at thePublic Record Office of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, the Ulster Museum,Stephen Beckett,Tracey Leavy, Margaret McKee, Paul Haslam, Glen Cartmill, Paul Sharkey, GeraldineMcCourt, Rachael Moore and Mark Adair.

Further Reading: Rex Cathcart’s A Most Contrary Region and Dr Jonathan Bardon’s Beyond the Studio (Blackstaff Press)

contacts BBC Information 08700 100 222* Text phone for people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment is: 08700 100 212 *Calls charged at national rate and may be recorded

BBC NI Accountability Department 028 90 338 210 The Secretary, BBC NI, Broadcasting House, Ormeau Avenue, Belfast BT2 8HQ

BBC NI Archive at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum 028 90 428 428 The BBC Archive, c/o the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra, Co Down BT18 0EUEmail: [email protected]

For information on how to obtain tickets for BBC recordings, please log on tobbc.co.uk/ni/tickets

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of biographical and other information contained within this booklet, BBCNI would welcome feedback on any omissions or inaccuracies, and will endeavour to rectify these in any reprint/s of this publication.

28


An early recording by Sam Hanna Bell (on right) and the Outside Broadcast team.


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