Programme 1: Listen 29/11/2003
Julia Carlson and Maurice Devlin discuss The Time of our Singing by the acclaimed American novelist Richard Powers. Composed with the rapturous flow of the music it emulates, the novel follows a family over a half-century of American life, moving between past and present through the eyes and sensibility of its narrator, Joseph Strom, who has fled Nazi Germany. It also tells the story of the great African-American contralto Marian Anderson who meets the family at her famous recital, after she has been rejected by the classical music establishment. (Repeat)

Programme 2: Listen 06/12/2003
Gemma Hussey and James Downey discuss The Heat of the Kitchen by Bernard Donoughue, who has been a leading figure in British politics for three decades. This book talks frankly of his relationship with interesting contemporary figures such as Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Tony Crosland - and in particular with Robert Maxwell. The second book Glimmers of Twilight: Harold Wilson in Decline, was written by Wilson's press secretary Joe Haines. Haines wrote an account of his time at No. 10, Downing Street, published in 1977, which caused a sensation at the time. This new book, written with the benefit of longer hindsight is no less sensational. It reveals that Wilson's doctor suggested that the solution to the Lady Falkender problem was murder.

Programme 3: Listen 13/12/2003
In the 41 years of her life, the British contralto Kathleen Ferrier became one of the best-loved and most admired singers in the world. The daughter of a school-teacher, she left school at the age of 14 and became a telephone operator on the Blackburn Exchange in her native Lancashire. In 1937 she entered a singing competition at the Carlisle Festival, and won. She was 25, and it was her first step on the road to being a professional singer. In 1953, at the request of John Barbirolli, Kathleen Ferrier was engaged to sing the title role in a new production of Gluck's Orpheus at Covent Garden. Tragically, she lived only long enough to complete two performances. Veronica Dunne and singer/ broadcaster Pádraig O'Rourke have been reading Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier edited by Christopher Fifield, a collection of over 300 letters and 12 years of personal diaries.

Programme 4: Listen 20/12/2003
Professor Tom Garvin and Catriona Crowe discuss two books coinciding with the centenary of the birth of Eric Blair, aka George Orwell: Orwell's Victory by Christopher Hitchens and Orwell: The Life by D.J. Taylor. Since the mid 20th century, Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four have sold over 40 million copies. The pair of novels brought him his first fame and almost his only remuneration as a writer. The adjective 'Orwellian' is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature and language. Orwell's Victory, by Christopher Hitchens recreates the contexts and situations that influenced Orwell's most well-known work: privileged Eton, imperial Burma, the kitchens of Paris and the terraced streets of Lancashire, war-torn Spain, and London in the Blitz.

Programme 5: Listen 27/12/2003
This week, Terence Brown and Bruce Arnold on W.B. Yeats: a life: The Arch-poet, 1915-1939 by R.F. Foster. The book covers the second half of Yeats's life, taking in his controversial political involvements, continued supernatural experiments, his extraordinary marriage, a series of love affairs, and the writing of his greatest poetry.

Programme 6: Listen 03/01/2004
Stephanie McBride, John Waters and Patricia Casey discuss Shooting People: Adventures in Reality TV by Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohan. In the late 1990s reality game shows like Big Brother and Survivor won unprecedented audiences across Europe and the US. The shows subjected their contestants to protracted seclusion from the outside world, and offered up a novel combination of mundanity and extremity. Ireland too has had its share of reality TV shows, from TG4's S.O.S. to RTÉ's Cabin Fever and Celebrity Farm. Shooting People explores the emergence of the form, its relation to documentary and its significance in a globalized TV industry. Three people who have read the book are in studio with Andy O'Mahony: Psychiatrist Dr. Patricia Casey, journalist John Waters and media lecturer Stephanie McBride.

Programme 7: Listen 10/01/2004
Emer O'Kelly and Fintan O'Toole discuss Kenneth Tynan: A Life by Dominic Shellard. Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980) lived one of the most intriguing theatre lives of his century. He made a powerful contribution to post-war British theatre. A brilliant writer, critic and agent provocateur, he made friends or enemies of nearly every major actor, playwright, impresario and movie mogul of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He wrote for The Evening Standard, The Observer, and The New Yorker, and spent his final years in Los Angeles.

Programme 8: Listen 17/01/2004
Michael Laffan and Patricia Casey discuss Interrogations: Inside the Minds of the Nazi Elite by Richard Overy. (repeat)
In the months after the German defeat in 1945, the Allies had a unique opportunity to talk to the politicians and soldiers who only a few weeks before had led the Third Reich. The interrogations were carefully recorded and transcribed and formed an important part of the prosecution case against the major war criminals arraigned at Nuremberg in November 1945. In this work, selected transcripts are published, with pictures and accompanying text. Interrogations: Inside the Minds of the Nazi Elite by Richard Overy
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0140284540

Programme 9: Listen 24/01/2004
John Devitt and Des McHale discuss Searching for John Ford: A Life by Joseph McBride. Nobody captured the landscape and faces of the American people the way John Ford did, in films such as The Searchers, Stagecoach and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The Quiet Man was a deeply personal project for Ford, who was the son of Irish immigrants. It starred John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara and won him an Oscar for Best Director.

Programme 10: Listen 31/01/2004
Theatre director Patrick Mason, actor Ingrid Craigie and Dr. Tony Roche discuss Shakespeare's Advice to the Players, by Peter Hall. Shakespeare's text is packed with clues that help the reader to hear and the performer to act any speech. He also tells the actor when to go fast and when to go slow and when to accent a particular word. This book sets out to make going to Shakespeare's performances or acting in them a richer experience and it should have a wide appeal to both actors and audiences. This book is also a celebration on Peter Hall's fifty years as a director of Shakespeare, from his early day at Cambridge, through founding the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford on Avon, and later to his fifteen years as the Director of the Royal National Theatre. During these years he has worked with the greatest Shakespearean actors including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins and many others. And it is this experience of working and learning with these and many other actors over the years, that underpins the core of this book.
Publisher: Oberon Books
ISBN: 1 84002 372 4

Programme 11: Listen 14/02/2004
Emer O'Kelly and Tony Roche discuss Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard. Ira Nadel's book recounts Stoppard's life, from his escape as a child from the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, via Singapore and India to Britain, and his youth in swinging '60s London. Tom Stoppard was the youngest playwright ever produced at the National Theatre, and his career progressed to success in the West End and international recognition. This is a portrait of the man behind the plays. (Repeat)
Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard, by Ira Nadel
Publisher: Methuen
ISBN: 0413730506

Programme 12: Listen 21/02/2004
David Norris, Seán Barrett and Roy Foster talk about The Junior Dean: Encounters with a Legend, a 90th birthday tribute to Dr. R.B. McDowell, sometime Professor and Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.
R.B. McDowell is a legend, a renowned after-dinner speaker and the source of endless amusing anecdotes and memories. He was appointed a lecturer in Trinity in 1945, and for 13 years (1956 - 1969) he was an extremely effective Junior Dean, in charge of disciplining the student body.

Programme 13: Listen 28/02/2004
Fintan O'Toole, Mary Maher and Fergus Finlay discuss Dick Walsh Remembered, featuring selected columns from The Irish Times 1990-2002.
For over 30 years, through his column, Walsh kept a keen and sceptical eye on the world of Irish politics. In his very individual style, he wrote with compassion and understanding on behalf of those who had no voice, or whose voices were ignored. He had a rare political insight and believed passionately in freedom and democracy, its institutions and safeguards. Also featured on the programme is the book Changing The Times. Edited by Elgy Gillespie, it is a collection of the 'new journalism' by Irish Times women writers which first appeared on the Women First pages during the 1970s. Taken together, the pieces reflect the enormous social changes of those years.

Programme 14: Listen 06/03/2004
Linda Hogan and Seán Freyne discuss recent publications dedicated to two eminent Irish theologians. The Critical Spirit: Theology at the Crossroads of Faith and Culture is a collection of essays celebrating the 75th birthday of leading Irish theologian Gabriel Daly.
An Augustus priest for over fifty years, Gabriel Daly lectured at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, before moving in the 1980s to teach at the newly-founded School of Hebrew, Biblical and Theological Studies in Trinity College, Dublin. He was actively involved in the foundation of the Irish School of Ecumenics (now an Academic Institute of Trinity College Dublin), where he remains a member of the teaching faculty. An internationally- acknowledged expert on Roman Catholic Modernism, his recent contributions to theology have been in the area of creation and ecological ethics, most notably his 1988 work, Creation and Redemption.
Between Poetry and Politics celebrates the unique contribution that Enda McDonagh has made to the field of theological ethics. Since the 1960s many moral theologians have sought to dialogue with the realities of politics, spirituality and the arts, and although many moral theologians find their inspiration in either art or politics, it is difficult to mention another whose work is shaped so intensely by both.

Programme 15: Listen 13/03/2004
Fintan Vallely and Harry White discuss the first biography of the man who spearheaded the revival of Irish traditional music. Tomás Ó Canainn's Seán Ó Riada: His life and work describes the man who became one of the most influential and intriguing characters in Irish artistic life - composer, musician, raconteur and academic. The book traces his career from student days in Cork to working at RTÉ, The Abbey and finally University College Cork and living in Coolea. During his short life Seán crossed paths with a host of personalities and suffered many personal, professional and financial crises. The book includes the highly amusing Charles Acton correspondence and the great critic's obituary for Seán.

Programme 16: Listen 20/03/2004
Hilary Pyle, Alan Titley and John Horgan discuss The Spire, a collection of essays and articles in which Bruce Arnold looks at Irish literature, art and contemporary culture. Also featured on the programme is Desmond Fennell's Cutting to the Point. Fennell's subject matter ranges across a broad spectrum, delving into literature, art, history, religion, politics, nationalism, linguistics, academia and the media.

Programme 17: Listen 27/03/2004
Maurice Devlin and Julia Carlson discuss Toni Morrison's latest novel Love. In the ocean-side community of Up Beach, a once popular resort, Morrison introduces a cast of characters - Heed, Romen, Junior, Christine, Celestial - who all react to one man - Bill Cosey. Though slim in pages, Morrison constructs Love with a precision and elegance that shows her characters' flaws and fears with brutal accuracy.

Programme 18: Listen 03/04/2004
Michael Cronin and Ailbhe Smyth discuss Lessons of the Masters. When we talk about education today, we tend to avoid the rhetoric of "mastery," with its erotic and inegalitarian overtones. But the charged personal encounter between master and disciple is precisely what interests George Steiner in this book, a sustained reflection on the infinitely complex and subtle interplay of power, trust, and passions in the most profound sorts of pedagogy. Based on Steiner's Norton Lectures on the art and lore of teaching, Lessons of the Masters evokes a host of exemplary figures, including Socrates and Plato, Jesus and his disciples, Virgil and Dante, Heloise and Abelard, Tycho Brahe and Johann Kepler, the Baal Shem Tov, Confucian and Buddhist sages, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Nadia Boulanger, and Knute Rockne. Pivotal in the unfolding of Western culture are Socrates and Jesus, charismatic masters who left no written teachings, founded no schools. In the efforts of their disciples, in the passion narratives inspired by their deaths, Steiner sees the beginnings of the inward vocabulary, the encoded recognitions of much of our moral, philosophical, and theological idiom. He goes on to consider a diverse array of traditions and disciplines, recurring throughout to three underlying themes: the master's power to exploit his student's dependence and vulnerability; the complimentary threat of subversion and betrayal of the mentor by his pupil; and the reciprocal exchange of trust and love, of learning and instruction between master and disciple.

Programme 19: Listen 10/04/2004
This week the discussion centres on the book Intelligence in War by John Keegan. From the earliest times, commanders have sought knowledge of the enemy, his strengths and weaknesses, his dispositions and intentions. John Keegan surveys intelligence in war from the Napoleonic Wars to the sophisticated electronic warfare of the 21st century. His portrayals include the dilemmas of Nelson seeking Napoleon's fleet, Stonewall Jackson in the American Civil War, Bletchley as it seeks to crack Ultra during the Battle of the Atlantic, and the intelligence issues of the contemporary fight against terrorism. On the panel: Eunan O'Halpin, Bank of Ireland Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin. He is preparing a study of British intelligence and Ireland in the Second World War to be published by Oxford University Press in 2005. Dr Tom Clonan is a retired army officer with experience in the Middle East and former Yugoslavia. He currently lectures in the School of Media, DIT.

Programme 20: Listen 17/04/2004
Historians Kevin Whelan and John A. Murphy discuss two recent books dealing with the Rising of 1798. Tom Dunne's Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798 deals with the rebellion of 1798 in Wexford and its 200th anniversary. Tom Dunne has always argued that, "1798 in Wexford was complex rather than simple, that it should not be romanticised, politicised or commercialised". Tom engaged in a very public debate at the time of the 1798 Commemorations in The Irish Times, and he decided to finish his book on the events of the 5 June 1798, and its reverberations through his own family history and his own life. Peter Collins' Who Fears to Speak of '98 assesses the changing attitudes to commemoration of the Rising of 1798 within Nationalism and hostility to it within Loyalism down through the years. It explores the reaction of the Catholic Church and O'Connellite / Constitutional Nationalism to the United Irishmen, and the extent to which Prebyterians had in 1898 become alienated from the United Irishmen of whom many were direct ancestors.

Programme 21: Listen 24/04/2004
John Waters and Ivana Bacik look at two books by John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. Straw Dogs is a radical work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche and Marx, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. John Gray argues that the humanist belief in human difference is an illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. In Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern, Gray argues that September 11 destroyed the idea of globalization as a single pathway to modernity. He also considers the rise and decline of the global free market, the pretensions of economics, the metamorphosis of war and the prospects of an American empire.

Programme 22: Listen 01/05/2004
Julia Carlson and Peter Denman discuss two recent books by Paul Auster. In the novel Oracle Night, the central character Sidney Orr is several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness. He begins writing again after buying an unusual blue notebook in a Brooklyn stationery shop. It is September 18th, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, within a world of eerie premonitions. Auster's Collected Prose is a highly personal collection of essays, prefaces and occasional pieces written for magazines and newspapers. The pieces range in subject from Walter Raleigh to Kafka; Hawthorne to high-wire artist Philippe Petit; conceptual artist Sophie Calle to his own typewriter; and The World Trade Center catastrophe to his beloved New York City itself.

Programme 23: Listen 08/05/2004
Dermot Moran and Joe Dunne discuss Curtis Cate's biography Friedrich Nietzsche. The son of a Lutheran clergyman, whom he adored, Nietzsche became a fearless agnostic who proclaimed, in Thus Spake Zarathustra that 'God is dead!' Of modest bourgeois origins, he detested middle-class conformity, and turned to an uncompromising cult of 'aristocratic radicalism'. Nietzsche was the first major philosopher to place psychology, rather than mathematics, logic, physics, or history, at the very centre of his thinking.

Programme 24: Listen 15/05/2004
Peter Denman and Julia Carlson discuss The Finishing School by Muriel Spark and The Master by Com Toibin. The Finishing School of Muriel Spark's novel is a college for both sexes and mixed nationalities run by Rowland Mahler, assisted by his wife, Nina Parker. When a 17 year-old pupil's own novel takes shape while his own flounders, Rowland becomes increasingly obsessed. The Master deals with the life of Henry James in the last five years of the 19th century. James moved to Rye in Sussex and it was there he wrote his short masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw, which drew on his own life as an exile in England and a member of one of the great eccentric American families. He was haunted by his own past, including his failure to fight in the American Civil War, the golden summer of 1865, and the death of his sister Alice.

Programme 25: Listen 22/05/2004
Judith Devlin and Ron Hill discuss Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps by Anne Applebaum. The book draws together the mass of memoirs published in Russia, to explore the vast network of labour camps which were once scattered across the country. It argues that the camps remained the State's ultimate weapon throughout the 70 years of the Soviet Union.

Programme 26: Listen 29/05/2004
Dr. Muiris Houston, Medical Correspondent of the Irish Times, and Dr. Darina O'Flanagan, Director of the National Disease Surveillance Centre discuss Doctors, Diseases and Decisions in Modern Medicine by Richard Horton. Richard Horton, for many years editor of The Lancet, examines the history of the relationship between doctor and patient, from ancient times to present day. The essays cover subjects including: the impact of modern warfare on health services; the debate over euthanasia; controversies over HIV and Aids; the human genome project; and the debate over the gay gene. Horton's introduction explores the significance of the Hippocratic oath, with particular reference to the Harold Shipman murders.

Programme 27: Listen 05/06/2004
Ita Daly and John Boland have been reading two very different memoirs. LIVING TO TELL THE TALE, the first volume of a planned trilogy, is the memoir of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It deals with his life from his birth in 1927, through the beginning of his career as a writer, to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. INTERESTING TIMES by Eric Hobsbawm. Born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Eric Hobsbawm's has been a life backdropped by an endless litany of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. He has led a remarkably fulfilling and long life; historian and intellectual, fluent in five languages, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, until it dissolved itself, and writer of countless volumes of history.

Programme 28: Listen 19/06/2004
Mendelssohn: A Life in Music by R. Larry Todd
Harry White and Ethna Tinney discuss a new major biography of classical composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, by R. Larry Todd. Most famous for the well-known "Wedding March" and other "lightweight" music, Mendelssohn was both a child prodigy and a musical genius. In his new work Larry Todd rights the record, re-examines his major compositions, explores the anti-Semitic reception to his work by Wagner and others, and looks at the related compositions of Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Hensel.

Programme 29: Listen 26/06/2004
Maryann Valiulis and Jim Downey discuss Conrad Black's biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The only US president elected for four terms, Roosevelt was struck down in the early 1920s with polio. He recovered to lead the United States out of the Depression. His 'New Deal' alone would have put him among the most revered of American presidents, but then came World War II. He and Churchill became close friends as well as allies and he represented the US at the great Peace Conferences at Yalta and Teheran.

Programme 30: Listen 03/07/2004
The Jesuits: Missions, Myths and Histories by Jonathan Wright. In studio with Andy O'Mahony are Louise Fuller (author of The Irish Catholic Church Since 1950) and Fergus O'Donoghue S.J., Editor of Studies. Over the course of five centuries members of the Society of Jesus have travelled as missionaries to every corner of the globe. They have been accused of killing kings and presidents. As well as the predictable roll call of Saints and Martyrs, the Society can also lay claim to the 35 craters on the moon named for Jesuit scientists. Jesuits have been pilloried and idolised on a scale unknown to members of any other religious order. Whether loved or loathed, the Society of Jesus's dramatic and wide-ranging impact could never be ignored.

James Joyce is by far the most famous person ever to receive an Irish Jesuit education. So pervasive was the Jesuit influence in his upbringing that nearly all of his studies, at primary, secondary and third level, were in institutions directed by the Society of Jesus. Though facing fresh crises and controversies, today's Jesuits are still active in the worlds of science and politics, education and devotion.

Programme 31: Listen 10/07/2004
Julia Carlson and Maurice Devlin will be talking about two recently published short story collections. William Trevor's A Bit on the Side is his first collection of stories since the award winning The Hill Bachelors was published in 2000. These dozen new stories explore the subject of adultery, and tell of secret passions, domestic infidelities, office romances, and the broken and unbroken rules of love. The stories in The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes deal with the theme of old age. InChina the lemon is the symbol of death. At the 'lemon table' of the final story, it is permissible - indeed obligatory - to talk about death and each of Barnes' characters is facing death, but each in a very different way.

Programme 32: Listen 17/07/2004
This week Judith Devlin and Ron Hill, both experts on Russian affairs, look at Putin's Progress, a biography of the Russian President by Peter Truscott and Inside Russia, by Andrew Jack. Peter Truscott's incisive biography sheds new light on one of the most enigmatic of modern leaders. Inside Putin's Russia, by Andrew Jack, the Financial Times's correspondent in Moscow, traces Putin's rise to power and assesses how he has performed in office, and the changing nature of the Russia he rules.

Programme 33: Listen 24/07/2004
Justine McCarthy and Robert O'Byrne discussed two
diaries:
1. The Diaries of Victor Klemperer: Lesser Evil, 1945-
1959
The third and final volume of the diaries of Victor
Klemperer, a Jew in Dresden who survived the war and
whose diaries have been hailed as one of the 20th
century's most important chronicles.

2. Beaton in the Sixties: More Unexpurgated Diaries by
Cecil Beaton, edited by Hugo Vickers. The swinging sixties uncensored - as viewed by celebrated photographer and diarist Cecil Beaton.