From Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to The Wine of the Rubaiyat by Mary O'Donnell above.
"When I was 19, I wandered into a bookshop in Dublin's Duke Street, and discovered a pale, blue, illustrated edition of a long poem called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and translated by Edward Fitzgerald. I bought it immediately. I was earning 14 pounds a week in my first secretarial job in an architect’s office in Ballsbridge. Every day at lunchtime, I hurried into town on the bus, had a quick sandwich, after which I’d head to the same bookshop..."
