The Book on One 2004

Information on books featured on The Book on One 2004 series.

6th December - 10th December 2004
The Irish Zorro by Gerard Ronan

22nd November - 26th November 2004
A Life in the Wild by Eamon de Buitléar
Naturalist, musician, filmmaker and broadcaster Eamon de Buitlear is accomplished in many fields. His autobiography is a warm, wry and amusing recollection of a life brimful with characters and events. Filled with hilarious anecdotes and acute observations, this book is infused with a sense of the magic and wonder that has filled Eamons life.
Read by the author

15th November - 19th November 2004
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote is a middle-aged gentleman from the region of La Mancha in central Spain. Obsessed with the chivalrous ideals touted in books he has read, he decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked. This classic tale is read by Niall Toibin.

8th November - 12th November 2004
Hard Shoulder by Peter Woods
Read by the author

1st November - 5th November 2004
Testimony to an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty
Read by Martina Carroll and Gary Murphy. A true story. The account of one woman's plight when, as a child of 10, she is snatched from the streets of Galway and taken to Barbados to live the life of a slave. That was in 1651 and she joined an estimated 50,000 other Irish who "disappeared" as indentured servants. Her story is told in the "Book on One" with Martina Carroll and Gary Murphy reliving the roles of Cot Daley and her interrogator.

25th October - 29th October 2004
Himself Alone: David Trimble and the ordeal of Unionism by Dean Godson.

18th October - 22nd October 2004
Hail and Farewell by George Moore.
George Moore was a contemporary of William Butler Yeats. The book was written shortly after the founding of The Irish Literary Theatre (a precursor of The Abbey Theatre, whose centenary occurs this year).

ccording to Peter O'Shaughnessy, the reader for this Book on One, Lady Gregory and Yeats felt that Moore was a little too unreliable and mischievous. They felt he had the potential to undo their great plan to bring the best of world drama to Dublin.

The reading succeeds in de-mystifying Yeats and Lady Gregory and provides a sarcastic running commentary on the establishment of the Abbey. While many people sought to beatify Yeats and his contemporaries, Hail and Farewell brings them down to earth.

Read by Peter O'Shaughnessy.

11th October - 15th October 2004
THE TAILOR AND ANSTY by Eric Cross.
Niall Toibin excels as the humble Tailor in a story that still resonates down Gougane Barra way on the borders of Cork and Kerry. The author of The Tailor and Ansty is Eric Cross and we hope to celebrate the centenary of his birth next year with a full-length, hour-long, radio play based on Conal Creedon's adaptation.

4th October - 8th October
THE GARDEN PARTY AND OTHER STORIES by Katherine Mansfield
Alison Glennie, a New Zealand-born actress, reads five short stories on the Book on One this week. They come from a collection entitled The Garden Party and Other Stories written by Kiwi writer Katherine Mansfield.

According to the critic Lorna Sage, these stories, which were written in the early 1920s, are the product of a great modernist. Katherine was barely 30 at the time and was then in the final stages of TB, an illness that she died of in 1923. Her family were of English stock and had made their home and fortune in New Zealand. Katharine spent her teens back in London, rubbing shoulders with literary greats such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.

The latter wrote of Katherine Mansfield: " She was forever pursued by her dying, and had to press on through stages that should have taken years in ten minutes ... She had a quality I adored and needed; I think her sharpness and reality - her having knocked about with prostitutes and so on, whereas I had always been respectable - was the thing I wanted then. I dream of her often...".

The Garden Party and other stories by Katherine Mansfield is published by Penguin ISBN: 0-14-018880-0

27th September - 1st October 2004
CLIMBING BRANDON by Chet Raymo
Philosopher and scientist Raymo uses his own decades-long knowledge of the mountain to show how science, far from being in conflict with spirit, can inspire and illuminate the mystical mind. The book is a physical and spiritual geography of Ireland's Holy Mountain. It is not a guide on how to best climb Brandon. However, what it does do is to show, amongst other things, how our pagan past co-exists with our Christian conversion a couple of millennia ago.

Chet Raymo reads the Book on One with a passionate affection for Mount Brandon. We can clearly know through this reading how an acclaimed science writer celebrates an enduring symbol of Ireland's Celtic past, Christian tradition and love of nature.

20th September - 24th September, 2004
JEALOUS by Richard Ford
Jealous is one of three mini-novels in a collection of three entitled Women with Men, written by the Pulitzer Prize-wining author, Richard Ford. The story is read by Gary Murphy produced in the RTÉ Cork Studios by Aidan Stanley. Interestingly, Ford flew to Cork from the States last September to attend the celebrations marking the birth of the Cork writer Frank O'Connor, having been an admirer of O'Connor's short stories since his teens. Jealous is a story of a young man growing up in the barren wastelands of Montana and of a long road journey he undertakes in the company of his rather attractive aunt. En route they stop off in a small-town bar where a man is shot dead. This has a huge impact on the 17 year old and forms a giant back-drop to the story's conclusion. Above all, the story has added-value due to Richard Ford's capacity to record the minutiae in the relations between women and men.

Jealous by Richard Ford is published by The Harvill Press London ISBN: 1-86046-448-3

13th September - 17th September 2004
Collected Stories by Frank O'Connor
A selection of stories written and read by the author Frank O'Connor.

6th September - 10th September 2004
The Joyce We Knew - Memoirs of James Joyce.
Edited by Ulick O'Connor and published by Brandon Books, The Joyce We Knew is a collection of reminiscences by some of Joyce's friends and contemporaries, giving an insight into his personality and bringing to light many of his less well-known characteristics. He was, for instance, quite a practical joker and a great man to have on your team at a game of charades!
Read by Ulick O'Connor
Produced in our Cork Studios by Aidan Stanley (repeat)

30th August - 3rd September 2004
Hope and History: Making Peace in Ireland by Gerry Adams.
In this book, the Sinn Fein President recounts episodes in the 20-year period between the IRA prison hunger strikes of the early '80s and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This acclaimed book recreates the long, slow and often agonising road towards the resolution of one of the most protracted of conflicts.
Read by the author.
Produced in our Cork Studios by Aidan Stanley

23rd August - 27th August 2004
Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War - A Fan's Story written by Conor O'Callaghan.
The book is a passionate exploration of the fallout from Roy Keane's sending home from Saipan just before the 2002 World Cup. While it does not include the recent return of the prodigal son, it does record the arguments in bars, shops and homes across the land when the nation was divided on the issue of who was culpable....the manager or the captain. A funny, polemical and occasionally moving book.
Read by Gary Murphy. (First broadcast 17/05/04)
Produced in our Cork Studios by Aidan Stanley

16th August - 20th August 2004
In Great Haste: The Letters of Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan edited by Leon Ó Broin.
This book looks at Michael Collins in a new light as a man in love rather than a revolutionary. Over 300 letters between Collins and his fiancée, Kitty Kiernan, are contained in this book showing Collins as a very humble and earnest man. The book reveals the passion and stormy quality of Collins' relationship with Kitty Kiernan and his emotions are initially expressed with humour and hope before a note of despair creeps in as the national movement fractures. Kiernan's concerns are more personal than political though she reveals herself as a woman of spirit and intelligence.
Revised and extended by Cian Ó hEigheartaigh
Read by Michael Patric and Hilary O'Shaughnessy

9th August - 13th August 2004
Mrs Shakespeare: The Complete Works by Robert Nye
An energetic and engaging book, Mrs Shakespeare: The Complete Works is a journal based on the experiences of Anne Hathaway during a week-long visit to London. It has few restraints and in this way is imaginative, funny and quick-moving, taking an irreverent look at the life of Shakespeare. The author, Robert Nye, is an accomplished novelist with most of his works being recreations of historical figures. In this book, Nye keeps Mrs Shakespeare's voice firmly in the Elizabethan period which gives the entertaining book even more strength and credibility.

2nd August - 6th August 2004
BALTIMORE'S MANSION - A MEMOIR by Wayne Johnston.
Wayne Johnston's fourth novel - and the only one to be set outside Newfoundland - is a hilarious send-up of television's early days, capturing all the nostalgia and innocence of the time.

26th July - 30th July 2004
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM by Joan Didion

19th July - 23rd July 2004
AN IRISH NAVVY - DIARY OF AN EXILE by Donal Mac Amhlaigh and translated from Irish by Valentin Iremonger.
An Irish Navvy paints an amazingly vivid picture of an Irish worker's life in post-Second World War England. Going weeks without a job, then being worked into the ground when one was found were all part of a life spent miles away from family and loved ones.

12th July - 16th July 2004
THE ABBEY THEATRE: THE FIRST 100 YEARS by Christopher Fitzsimon
The Abbey Theatre opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Over the course of the ensuing century it survived fire, riots and artistic controversies to become one of the central cultural treasure houses of Ireland. It has presented over 749 new plays and produced a huge range of international classical theatre.

5th July - 9th July 2004
PASSION PLAY by Conal Creedon
Passion Play is a gospel for the 21st century, thematically styled and structured on the Passion of Jesus Christ. "They say yer life flashes in front of yer eyes before ye dies". It is the darkest hour of Good Friday Morning. Demented, depressed and disillusioned our anti-hero Pluto stubs out a cigarette in the dregs of his coffee mug and buries himself deep under his bed clothes. He is alone and lonely in rundown bedsit-land.

28th June - 2nd July 2004
A SPRING IN MY STEP by Joan McDonnell
A Spring in my Step is a compelling story, an autobiographical account of a young girl with polio in 1950's Ireland told with great insight, humour and a wonderful lack of self pity. The book arose out of an encounter with Gay Byrne on the radio show and Gay has written the introduction praising the writer's "verve and wit and insight and some very fine writing." A remarkable story of triumph over adversity that is also very funny.

24th - 28th May, 2004
Seán Ó Riada: His Life and Work by Tomás Ó Canainn
Seán Ó Riada: His Life and Work details the fascinating life of Ireland's most inspirational composer. The biography, by Seán's former student and colleague Tomás Ó Canainn, gives a whole new picture of Ó Riada as a jazz-playing student, a bohemian in Paris, composer of modern and liturgical music, director of a trail-blazing traditional group, film-maker, university lecturer and much, much more. Ó Riada died in a London hospital at the age of 40, leaving his wife Ruth and seven children in Cúil Aodha.

Tomás Ó Canainn, formerly a piper with the famous Irish traditional music group Na Filí, was also Dean of Engineering at University College Cork and Seán Ó Riada's successor in the Music Department, lecturing there on Irish music for some years.

Seán Ó Riada: His Life and Work by Tomás Ó Canainn
Publisher: Collins Press
ISBN: 1-903464-40-4

17th - 21st May, 2004
Red Mist by Conor O'Callaghan, read by Gary Murphy.
The book is a passionate exploration of the fallout from Roy Keane's sending home from Saipan just before the 2002 World Cup. While it does not include the recent return of the prodigal son, it does record the arguments in bars, shops and homes across the land when the nation was divided on the issue of who was culpable....the manager or the captain.
A funny, polemical and occasionally moving book.

Red Mist by Conor O'Callaghan
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 0747 57 014.

10th - 14th May, 2004
Passion Play by Conal Creedon. Read by the author.
Passion Play is a gospel for the 21st century thematically styled and structured on the Passion of Jesus Christ. "They say yer life flashes in front of yer eyes before ye dies". It is the darkest hour of Good Friday Morning. Demented, depressed and disillusioned our anti-hero Pluto stubs out a cigarette in the dregs of his coffee mug and buries himself deep under his bed clothes. He is alone and lonely in rundown bedsit-land.

Passion Play by Conal Creedon
Publisher: Poolbeg
ISBN: 1-85371-698-7

3rd - 7th May, 2004
An Irish Navvy - The Diary of an Exile (Dialann Deoraí) by Donall MacAmhlaigh, read by Paschal Scott. This book was written by Donall MacAmhlaigh and is translated from Irish by Valentin Iremonger.

An Irish Navvy - The Diary of an Exile (Dialann Deoraí) by Donall MacAmhlaigh
Publisher: Collins Press
ISBN: 1-903464-36-6

26th - 30th April, 2004
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck read by Bosco Hogan.
Two migrant workers, George and Lennie, have been let off a bus miles away from the California farm where they are due to start work. George is a small, dark man with "sharp, strong features." Lennie, his companion, is his opposite, a giant of a man with a "shapeless" face.

19th - 23rd April, 2004
Lies of Silence by Brian Moore read by Daniel Reardon.
When Michael Dillon's mistress is offered a job in London, he is finally forced into a series of difficult decisions: to leave his insecure, bulimic wife; to request a transfer from his Belfast hotel manager's job; to finally flee an Ireland which he loathes. But, that night, after he has been unable to confront his wife with his decision, IRA gunmen break into their home.

12th - 16th April, 2004
Saibhreas 5 by Déaglán Collinge
Rogha Próis i nGaeilge (ath-craoladh)

5th - 9th April, 2004
Amongst Women by John McGahern.
Michael Moran is an embittered Irish Republican who detests the 'small minded gangsters' who now run the country for whose independence he fought. Now a soldier without a battle, he transfers his brutality to his own family. He is hard on his daughters: Maggie, a late bloomer who wants to study nursing.

29th March - 2nd April, 2004
Saibhreas 5 by Déaglán Collinge
This week: Rogha Próis I nGaeilge
I gcomhar leis an séasúr Listening to The Leaving ar RTÉ Raidió a hAon beidh an chéad rogha próis ó chúrsa Gaeilge na hardteistimeireachta á cur i láthair ar The Book On One gach oíche ó Luan go hAoine ag 11.25pm. Is í Ann Marie Horan a léifidh na sliochatanna éagsúla.

Saibhreas 5 by Déaglán
Publisher: Mentor Books
ISBN: 1-902586-48-4

22nd - 26th March, 2004
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. First published in 1958, this is the story of a 'strong' man whose life is dominated by fear and anger. It is also a social document, recounting the impact of colonialism and Christianity on the life of an African tribe - the Ibo - in turn-of-the-century Nigeria.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Penquin in paperback
Price: €11.60 euro
ISBN: 0-14-118688-7

15th - 19th March, 2004
A Thig ná Tit Orm by Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé
A Thig ná Tit Orm by Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé was written to tell the story of the author growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in the Gaeltacht of Kerry, the work he was involved in and what he did in his spare time. It goes on to describe his experience working in Great Britain and the United States of America.

A Thig ná Tit Orm by Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé
Publisher: CJ Fallon
ISBN: 0-7144-1212-0