A chance meeting with a professor of circus fired children’s writer Sarah Webb’s imagination and led to her latest novel. Sarah learned how Ireland had the second circus in the world in the late 1700s, with stunt riding, clowns, acrobats - and bee charming, or riding with a necklace of live bees. Her novel, The Little Bee Charmer of Henrietta Street (for eight to 12-year-olds), was the result. It blends tenement life in 1911 Dublin with circus life.  Presented and produced by Martina Devlin More on the book here: https://obrien.ie/the-little-bee-charmer-of-henrietta-street

City of Books

#33 BIG TOP, BIG DREAMS - SARAH WEBB

Michael Collins is the most famous casualty of the Irish Civil War but there is a lot of “what-if-ery”about him, says Ireland’s best-known historian. “Some “vey fanciful” claims are about the kind of leader he would have become if he had survived, according to Diarmaid Ferriter. He says: “We have to be careful of investing too much in the idea of the lost leader because Collins shared many of the limitations and the prejudices, as well as the considerable abilities, of his generation.” Professor Ferriter notes that Michael Collins was “a serious celebrity” at the time of his death in 1922. He dismisses conspiracy theories about his shooting at Béal na Bláth in Co Cork as “far-fetched”. Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War by Diarmaid Ferriter is published by Profile Books. More here: https://profilebooks.com/work/between-two-hells/ Podcast presented and produced by Martina Devlin

#32 Myth-Making Michael Collins

Playwright Rosaleen McDonagh talks about her activism, disability campaigning, journey through adult education which led to a Phd, and weaving together elements of Traveller culture and settled culture, forging an identity from them. She tells her powerful story in a collection of essays, Unsettled, dedicated to her family. And she speaks with pride about the current generation of articulate, engaged, ambitious Travellers. Produced and presented by Martina Devlin For more on Unsettled: https://skeinpress.com/product/unsettled/

#31 The Road Less Travelled

A delicate, rare bloom which is “like the blood diamonds of the flower world” and fetches millions of euro is the subject of poet Paul Perry’s first solo novel. The Garden centres on an orchid farm in Florida, where the owner is desperate to revive his fortunes by growing the highly-prized ghost orchid. But to find one of the orchids, he needs the help of the local Seminole tribe living on a nearby reservation. Paul, who worked on an orchid farm in Florida for three years in the 1990s, says: “An underbelly and black economy has grown up, so you have poachers and a whole other economy parallel to the legitimate ones.” More about The Garden here: https://www.newisland.ie/fiction/the-garden

#30 Paul Perry's Eden Gone Wrong

Violet Gibson, an Irishwoman who attempted to shoot Italy’s fascist leader Mussolini, is one among a host of fascinating characters in Evelyn Conlon’s new short story collection, Moving About The Place. In 1926, she fired on ‘Il Duce’ as he walked among the crowd in a piazza in Rome. Her bullet skimmed his nose. The crowd attacked the would-be assassin, but the police intervened. Violet was committed to an asylum and never released –  the same institution where Lucia Joyce spent more than thirty years. “Difficult women were locked up for all sorts of reasons,” says Evelyn. More here on Moving About The Place by Blackstaff: https://blackstaffpress.com/moving-about-the-place-9781780733104

#29 In Praise of Difficult Women

From social change to gender change - all bases are covered in this wide-ranging conversation with one of Ireland's most sparkling writers. Lisa McInerney's The Glorious Heresies trilogy is a memorable take on a seamy slice of life. The latest and third novel is its riotous conclusion, The Rules of Revelation. More here on her novel: https://www.lisamcinerney.com  

#28 Lisa McInerney's Riotous Revelations

A new collection of essays which reflect on the perils and compulsions of authorship, the vagaries of success and failure - and what counts as either. Twenty-one contributors tell it like it really was. All of them came of age when equality legislation was being enacted in Ireland – often due to their activism. Look! It's A Woman Writer is edited by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and published by Arlen House. More information here: http://arlenhouse.blogspot.com Produced and presented by Martina Devlin

#27 Look! It's A Woman Writer!

At the age of 20, three months after meeting James Joyce, Nora Barnacle left everything she knew behind to share the adventure of a lifetime with him. She was a maid in a Dublin hotel when they met, and he was a clever and ambitious young man who wanted to be a writer. In 1904, they shipped out for mainland Europe, at times living a hand-to-mouth existence, at other times eating in the best restaurants. But through it all, Nora stuck by Joyce, who made her his muse and immortalised her as Molly Bloom in Ulysses. Nuala O’Connor, who brings Nora vividly to life in her novel of the same name, discusses the famous literary couple. Nora: A Love Story of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce by Nuala O’Connor is published by New Island: https://www.newisland.ie/fiction/nora Produced and presented by Martina Devlin

#26 Nora Barnacle - Joyce's Muse

“One of the brilliant things about books is that you can buy a book by the very best writers and if it still costs a tenner – it doesn’t cost any more than bad writing,” says Rónán Hession. He's author of the 2021 One Dublin One Book choice Leonard and Hungry Paul. It's a quirky, thoughtful novel which makes the case for kindness - and he says he's been on the receiving end of this quality throughout his life. Rónán notes: “If you want to buy very good quality clothes they cost more, or live in a very well designed house, or go to a very fancy restaurant, there’s a price difference. “But in books you can buy the greatest literature in the world for the same cost as a more commercial or more disposable product. So there’s no price difference, there’s no barrier.” More about the novel: https://bluemoosebooks.com/books/leonard-and-hungry-paul More about One Dublin One Book: http://www.onedublinonebook.ie

#25 Rónán Hession on Why Kindness is King

John Banville, who has killed off his own Benjamin Black pen name, is disturbed by explicit depictions of violence in popular culture. He warns that people are constantly bombarded with graphic images. “There has to be more violence, more shock, more terror,” says the Booker Prize-winner, wondering where it will all end. “If I were a young woman now I’d be out protesting about these things. It can’t be good for young men to be watching them." His latest novel Snow, published by Faber and Faber, is set in an Irish Big House in the 1950s and opens with the corpse of a priest found in the library. More on Snow here: https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571362677-snow.html City of Books producer and presenter: Martina Devlin Theme tune composer: Daragh Dukes

#24 John Banville Fades To Black

Oscar-winning filmmaker Neil Jordan runs parallel careers as a director and novelist, and his latest book is his most cinematic yet. It’s an historical novel, The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small, about the true-life friendship between aristocrat turned revolutionary Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the runaway American slave who saved his life. “I don’t know how I would have lived if I didn’t make movies and I also don’t know how I would have lived if I didn’t write books,” says Neil. Films feel like short stories to him, and he never stops writing – short stories, novels and film scripts. He says: “When I started directing movies I felt I was in a world of Neanderthals. I felt I had suddenly strayed into this world of these blundering dinosaurs. “And I thought, what am I doing here, this strange little Irish guy? And they used to treat me that way as well, they’d almost treat you with amused contempt. It was kind of weird.” The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small by Neil Jordan is published by Lilliput Press. More here: https://www.lilliputpress.ie/product/the-ballad-of-lord-edward-and-citizen-small Presented and produced by Martina Devlin Music by Daragh Dukes

#23 Neil Jordan and the Runaway Slave

“As someone prone to get lost in the darker currents of my own head I’ve found it healthier to get lost in a book,” says Danielle McLaughlin. She speaks candidly about feelings of anxiety and how immersing herself in reading and writing is a positive way to deal with them. Danielle switched from law – where she had her own successful legal practice – to fiction after falling ill. As she recovered, she started writing. It led to the acclaimed short story collection Dinosaurs on Other Planets, and now her debut novel The Art of Falling, published by John Murray, which deals with art and infidelity. https://www.johnmurraypress.co.uk/titles/danielle-mclaughlin/the-art-of-falling/9781473613683/

#22 Danielle McLaughlin on Finding Herself

“The number 63 has come up for me time and time again in very strange ways,” says writer Louise O’Neill. “I have put it in each of my books." One of her favourite reads is Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes, which Louise read in St John o’ Gods while suffering from anorexia: “It was such an important book for me in terms of understanding my behaviour, in particular the addictive element." Her latest novel, for which she won the crime fiction trophy at the 2020 Irish Book Awards, is After the Silence published by Quercus. More information here: https://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/landing-page/after-the-silence/ Produced and presented by Martina Devlin Music by Daragh Dukes

#21 Instances of the Number 63

Poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin talks about a time when books were banned in Ireland. And how her mother, distinguished children's writer Eilís Dillon, had a cupboard of them which she handed out to the family. “It was, of course, nonsensical that they were banned," says Eiléan. “You had to go out and get them quickly when they were first published." Eiléan was recently named winner of China’s prestigious 1573 International Poetry Award. Produced and presented by Martina Devlin. Music by Daragh Dukes. Eiléan's Collected Poems spanning more than half a century available from the Gallery Press website here: https://www.gallerypress.com/authors/m-to-n/eilean-ni-chuilleanain/

#20 A Poetic Licence Earned

“I don’t know if Ireland is the same any more,” says Booker Prize winner and former Laureate for Irish Fiction Anne Enright. Previously hidden things have become “knowable, newly sayable” in the last 30 years and this has contributed to an altered Ireland. “That process by which things become known has been one of the great engines of my own writing over the last three decades” and has been “creatively fruitful,” says Anne, whose latest novel is Actress. Among other themes, the book deals with Hollywood’s casting couch regime and chimes with the Me Too movement. City of Books is funded by the Arts Council and supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and the Museum of Literature Ireland, MOLI. Produced and presented by Martina Devlin. Music by Daragh Dukes. For more on Actress: https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1009089/anne-enright.html

#19 ANNE ENRIGHT ON AN ALTERED IRELAND

Martina Devlin talks books with people who believe stories matter. And that you can never have too many books.

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