One of the best-known Irish playwrights, John Millington Synge premiered The Playboy of the Western World in 1907. It immediately provoked controversy, eventually resulting in the infamous ‘Playboy’ riots. It has been recorded and adapted many times, but this timeless recording stars the Irish actors who made it a classic, including Siobhan McKenna and Cyril Cusack.

A collection of some of William Trevor’s most acclaimed works, as heard on BBC RadioWilliam Trevor was an Irish literary legend. In a 40-year career, he published a multiplicity of novels, plays, and short stories, and received numerous awards and honours. He was often compared to Chekhov for his extraordinary insight into the human condition, and in these eleven tales, he delves into the inner lives of ordinary people, with all their passions, secrets, fears and d...

Two of J M Synge’s remarkable plays and an exploration of the man, his work and his life on the Aran IslandsJ M Synge was one of the giants of Irish theatre, and a leading dramatist of the Irish Literary Renaissance. Together with W B Yeats and others, he co-founded Dublin’s famous Abbey Theatre in 1904, and was a director there until his death in 1909. He is best known for his comic masterpiece The Playboy of the Western World, which appears here alongsid...

Zum 150.Geburtstag von W.B. Yeats am 13. JuniNobelpreisträger William Butler Yeats schrieb berührende Liebeslyrik, er beschwor die keltische Dämmerung und ein mythisches Byzanz. Seine stilistische Vielfalt – vom Volkslied bis zum formstreng komponierten Liebesgedicht – spiegelt sich in den unterschiedlichen Lesungen wider: in den kraftvollen Rezitationen des Autors und Dylan Thomas' sowie den legendären englischsprachigen Lesungen aus den Fünfzigerjahren. Hanns Zisc...

Cyril Cusack and Siobhan Mckenna read from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Cyril Cusack reads a selection from Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel