Off the Shelf - Series: September 2008 - May 2009

Programme 29: Saturday 16 May

King Dan: the Rise of Daniel O'Connell, 1775-1829 by Patrick M. Geoghegan is discussed by Mary Daly and John A. Murphy.
Famous in his day as the most feared lawyer in Ireland, Daniel O'Connell tormented judges, terrorised opposing barristers, and won a reputation for saving the lives of so many men who would otherwise have been hanged. He became 'The Counsellor', the fearless defender of the people. And he secured that reputation through his campaign for Catholic emancipation, when he founded the first successful mass democratic movement in European history, and became 'The Liberator'.

Programme 28: Saturday 9 May

Emer O'Kelly and Fintan O'Toole discuss Plays and Controversies: Abbey Theatre Diaries 2000-2005 by Ben Barnes.

In diaries covering the period of his artistic directorship of the Abbey, Ben Barnes offers a frank, honest, and probing account of a much commented upon and controversial period in the history of the national theatre. These diaries also provide fascinating personal insights into the day to day pressures, joys, and frustrations of running one of Ireland's most iconic institutions.

Programme 27: Saturday 25 April, 7.02pm

British Spies and Irish Rebels: British Intelligence in Ireland 1916-1945 by Paul McMahon discussed by Eunan O'Halpin and Ronan Fanning

Rebellion, partition and a messy peace settlement ensured that Ireland was a constant thorn in Britain's side after 1916. This book shows how, for decades, British intelligence struggled to cope with Ireland but then rose to the challenge after 1940, largely because the Dublin government began to share its secrets. The author casts light on characters long kept in the shadows - IRA gunrunners, Bolshevik agitators, Nazi agents, and Irish loyalists who acted as British spies.

Programme 26: 18th April 2009

Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Allen Lane) is discussed by Prof. David McConnell and Fr. Brendan Purcell.

Adrian Desmond and James Moore, world authorities on Darwin, give a completely new explanation of how Darwin came to his famous view of evolution, which traced all life to an ancient common ancestor. Darwin was committed to the abolition of slavery, in part because of his family's deeply held beliefs. It was his 'Sacred Cause' and at its core lay a belief in human racial unity. Leading apologists for slavery in Darwin's day argued that blacks and whites had originated as separate species, with whites superior. Creationists too believed that 'man' was superior to other species. Darwin gave all the races - blacks and whites, animals and plants - a common origin and freed them from creationist shackles.

Programme 24: 7 March 2009

On the programme this evening, Great Irish Lives discussed by Nóirín Hegarty, Ronan Fanning and the editor of the book Charles Lysaght.

This week's discussion is about Great Irish Lives, which brings together a unique collection of obituaries of Ireland's most distinguished individuals as featured in The Times. Charles Lysaght, long-time contributor of Irish obituaries to The Times, has selected the subjects for inclusion and he will be in studio along with Nóirin Hegarty, Editor of the Sunday Tribune, and Ronan Fanning, Emeritus Professor of Modern History, UCD.
The obituaries of figures from the last two centuries include Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Lady Gregory, Thomas Moore, W.B.Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Collins, Countess Markievicz, Eamon de Valera, George Best, Maureen Potter and Eamon Andrews.

Programme 23: 21 February 2009

On tonight's Off the Shelf Indignation by Philip Roth and The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and are discussed by Julia Carlson and Niall MacMonagle.

Indignation, Philip Roth's twenty-ninth book, tells the story of a young man's education in life's terrifying chances and bizarre obstructions. It is a startling departure from the haunted narratives of old age and experience in his recent books. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner. The eponymous antihero of the title is Balram Halwai - too poor to finish school, he begins his working life slaving in a tea shop, but he gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur. The novel presents a raw and unromanticised India, from the desperate, almost lawless villages along the Ganges, to the booming technology industries of Bangalore.

Programme 22: 14th February 2009

On the programme this evening, TONY'S TEN YEARS:: Memories of the Blair Administration

by Adam Boulton discussed by Alison O'Connor, James Downey and Noel Whelan.

Presenter: Andy O'Mahony
Producer: Bernadette Comerford

Programme 21: 31st January 2009

Eiléan Ní Chuilleannáin, Hugh McFadden and David Norris discuss Leland Bardwell's memoir A Restless Life (Liberties Press). Leland is well-known in Irish literary circles for her novels and short stories, including the much lauded Girl on a Bicycle, Mother to a Stranger and That London Winter.

Now in her 80s, Leland Bardwell's book tells of her Protestant upbringing in a large Georgian house in Leixlip, her bohemian early life, her many love affairs and the Dublin literary scene in the 1960's. The book also poetically describes an Ireland on the cusp of great change; socially, culturally and economically.

Programme 20: 24th January 2009

Ethna Tinney and John Hughes discuss John Lucas' biography of the legendary conductor Sir Thomas Beecham - Thomas Beecham: An Obsession With Music by John Lucas.

Thomas Beecham was one of Britain's greatest conductors of orchestral music and opera as well as an entrepreneur and impresario of exceptional energy and brilliant wit. His new biography deals with his early years, his complicated private life, his father's catastrophic attempt to buy a large part of Covent Garden - which brought the family to its knees financially - and the orchestras and opera companies that Beecham founded.

Programme 19: 17th January 2009

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian is discussed by Jerusha McCormack and Maurice Devlin.

This book has been hailed as Ma Jian's masterpiece. The author was born in Qingdao, China in 1953 and now lives in London.
The narrator of the novel, Dai Wei, has been unconscious for almost a decade, since he was struck by a soldier's bullet in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Although he is in a coma, he experiences a flood of sensory recollections and experiences. The novel is his account of his life from childhood until the fateful date of June 4, 1989, and the immense transformations that take place in China in its aftermath, relayed by friends who come to visit him.

Programme 18: 10th January 2009

This evening, Catriona Crowe, John Horgan and Richard Downes discuss The News from Ireland by Maurice Walsh.

Programme 17: 3rd January 2009

On tonight's programme, The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria discussed by Alan Dukes and Michael D. Higgins.

Programme 16: 27 December 2008

Dave Fanning and John Waters discuss On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno by David Sheppard.

A founder member of Roxy Music, Brian Eno has worked with everyone from Talking Heads and U2 to Pavarotti and David Bowie and is often billed as the founding father of ambient music.

Programme 15: 20 December 2008

On tonight's programme Michael Laffan, Gemma Hussey and Charles Lysaght discuss Redmond: The Parnellite by Dermot Meleady.

As chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the U.K. Parliament from 1900 to 1918, John Redmond brought the forty-year struggle for Home Rule to a successful conclusion in 1914, only to see his achievement wrecked by war in Europe and insurrection at home. He is now remembered principally - and controversially - for his call to Irishmen to enlist in the British army in the Great War. This book traces Redmond's first years as a young M.P. and acolyte of Parnell in the Home Rule campaign and agrarian struggles of the 1880s. It examines his motives in taking Parnell's side in the disastrous party split caused by the exposure of the latter's affair with Katharine O'Shea. It then follows his efforts in the 1890s to uphold Parnell's principle of independent opposition in Parliament, while seeking at home to cultivate the support of both Fenian elements and Irish unionists.

Programme 14: 13 December 2008

Tonight, The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore discussed by Julia Carlson and Niall MacMonagle.

Programme 13: 6 December 2008

The Age of Assassins: The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin by Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Priblovsky (Gibson Square Books) is discussed by Ron Hill and Seamus Martin. The book gives a picture of Putin's life and activities since 1975 and of the people who have been close to him.

Ron Hill is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College Dublin who specialises in Russian and Soviet politics. As Moscow Correspondent for The Irish Times, Séamus Martin covered the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Programme 12: 29 November 2008

Selina Guinness, Tony Roche and John Boland discuss the third volume of W.H. Auden's prose works, edited by Edward Mendelson.

Programme 11: 22nd November 2008

Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century by Tony Judt discussed by Brigid Laffan, Noel Dorr and Tom Garvin.

Programme 10: 8th November 2008

REMEMBERING THE WAR DEAD

Tonight, Remembering the War Dead by Fergus D'Arcy is discussed by Kevin Myers and Charles Lysaght.

From the 1920s the Office of Public Works has been responsible for the graves of those who died in the two World Wars and are buried and commemorated in the Republic of Ireland. On the whole island there are at least 5,700 such war graves, over 3,100 in the Republic and 2,600 in Northern Ireland. The history of those 3,000 plus war dead in the Republic, how they came to be there, and how the Irish Government came to be responsible for them has now been captured by Professor D'Arcy in his book, Remembering the War Dead.

Programme 9: 1st November 2008

THE CIVIL SERVICE AND THE REVOLUTION IN IRELAND

The Civil Service and the Revolution in Ireland by Martin Maguire discussed by John A. Murphy and Ronan Fanning.

This book is a history of the Irish civil service and its response to revolutionary changes in the State. It examines the response of the civil service to the threat of partition, World War, the emergence of the revolutionary forces of Dáil Éireann and the IRA through to the Civil War and the Irish Free State. It questions the orthodox interpretation of evolution rather than revolution in the administration of the State and it throws new light on civil service organization in British-ruled Ireland. It also explores the process whereby Northern Ireland came into existence, the Dáil Éireann administration in the War of Independence, and civil service attitudes to the new Irish Free State.

Programme 8: 25th October 2008

COMMON WEALTH: ECONOMICS FOR A CROWDED PLANET

Patrick Honohan, Mary Raftery and Brendan Keenan discuss Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

The central theme of Jeffrey Sachs's new book is that we need a new economic paradigm. One that is based on a global, inclusive, co-operative, environmentally aware, science-based ideology because we are running up against the realities of a crowded planet. The alternative is a worldwide economic collapse of unprecedented severity. Prosperity will have to be sustained through more co-operative processes, relying as much on public policy as on market forces to spread technology, address the needs of the poor, and to husband threatened resources of water, air, energy, land, and biodiversity. The "soft issues" of the environment, public health, and population will eventually become the hard issues of geopolitics.

Programme 7: 18th October 2008

Julia Carlson and Niall MacMonagle discuss two José Saramago novels "Seeing" and "Death at Intervals".

Programme 6: 11th October 2008

A Life of Picasso: Volume 3: 1917-1935 by John Richardson is discussed by Medb Ruane and Robert Ballagh.

"Triumphant Years" is the subtitle of the third volume of John Richardson's biography of Picasso, the most important artist of the twentieth century.

This volume reveals Picasso at the height of his powers, producing not only the costumes and sets for such Diaghilev Ballets Russes productions as Parade and Tricorne but some of his most important sculptures and paintings.

These are tumultuous years for Picasso who is torn between marital respectability with Olga, the Russian ballerina who was his first wife, and the erotic passion of his mistress, Marie-Therese. Rome and Naples would inspire the classicism in Picasso's work of the early twenties and Richardson reveals how the mercurial, witty Cocteau introduced him to the aristocratic and artistic world of Paris, including the de Noailles art patrons who backed the surrealist films of Bunuel and Dali.

Programme 5: 4th October 2008

Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age: A Theological Portrait by Rev Dr D Vincent Twomey SVD is discussed by the author himself and by Fr. Séan Fagan SM.

Fr. Twomey, a former doctoral student of Joseph Ratzinger and long time friend of the Pope, felt the need to respond to the common question he heard often after the papal election, "What kind of person is the new Pope?" His book offers a theological portrait of the writings, teachings and thought of the brilliant theologian and spiritual writer, and a description of the man himself, his personality traits and how he communicates with others.

Programme 4: 27th September 2008

This week's book is The Monopoly of Violence: Why Europeans Hate Going to War by James J. Sheehan discussed by Brigid Laffan, Michael D. Higgins and Alan Dukes.

Programme 3: 20th September 2008

The Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid is discussed this evening by Mary O'Donnell and Peter Sirr.

Programme 2: 13th September 2008

Curriculum Matters in Ireland by Anton Trant discussed by Aine Hyland, Dermot Moran and John Coolahan.

Programme 1: 6th September 2008

Ethna Tinney, Harry White and Ronan Guilfoyle have been reading, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross which they will discuss with Andy OMahony in the first programme of this new series.