Read Ireland Book Reviews, October 2003

Gerry Adams
Chris Agee
Chris Agee
Brendan Anderson
Brendan Barrington
Dermot Bolger
Dermot Bolger
Christy Brown
Humphrey Carpenter
Evelyn Doyle
Diana Duff
David Fitzpatrick
R. F. Foster
Seamus Heaney
Brian Lalor
Carl McColman
Flann O’Brien
Flann O’Brien
Liam O’Flynn
Antoinette Quinn
Bill Rolston
Peter Sheridan
Peter Woods
W.B. Yeats

Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution by David Fitzpatrick
Along with his close comrades Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, Harry Boland was probably the most influential Irish revolutionary between 1917 and 1922. His sway extended to almost every aspect of republican activity. Already prominent as a hurler before 1916, he was convicted and imprisoned after an energetic Easter Week. He subsequently became Honorary Secretary of Sinn Fein, T.D. for South Roscommon in the First Dail, President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s Supreme Council, and a republican envoy in the United States between May 1919 and December 1921. He broke with Collins over the Treaty, but became chief intermediary between the factions. Early in the Civil War, however, he was killed by National army officers in the Grand Hotel, Skerries. Boland’s influence was the product of charm, gregariousness, wit and ruthlessness. After his rebel father’s early death, Boland’s mother raised him in a spirit of intransigent hostility to Britain. Yet he was also stylish, cosmopolitan, and humane. His celebrated contest with Collins for the love of Kitty Kiernan is perhaps the most intriguing of all Irish political romances. Attractive yet elusive, his personality helped shape the Irish revolution. This biography draws upon documents in Irish, British and American archives, including his American diaries and thousands of letters to, from, and about Boland. Extensive use has been made of family papers and de Valera’s vast archive on the Irish campaign in America. These and other recently released documents illuminate the inner workings of Irish republicanism, and the critical importance of brotherhood in the revolution. As an oldfashioned republican and advocate of ‘physical force’, Boland is still venerated as a martyr by revolutionary republicans. Yet, in his conduct, he practised the ambiguities associated with Sinn Fein in today’s Northern Ireland. Doctrine was subordinated to the twin quests for republican unity and political supremacy, entailing reiterated compromise, systematic duplicity and mastery of propagandist techniques. If his outlook seems archaic, his practice was astonishingly modern.

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Hard Shoulder by Peter Woods
When McBride, a young Irishman, leaves County Monaghan for the building sites of London, and the Germany, he is confronted by a harsh new world and the volatile men who have mastered and mythologised it. Quickly overwhelmed by the unrelenting quest for work and love, he soon finds himself enslaved to the road ahead, embittered by the cold comforts of its hard shoulder. But when he eventually returns to London, the limits of the heavy digger’s life, its quixotic pursuit of the Big Money, its illusory horizons, are brought shockingly and suddenly home. This novel is the story of countless unheard voices, transfiguring the haunting experiences of Ireland’s unconsidered exiles into a tale of intense colour and vibrancy.

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Big Fat Love by Peter Sheridan
The nuns at the convent of the Good Shepherd in Dublin’s North Wall certainly are not ready for Philo. And on a quiet Sunday evening they find their peace shattered by an insistent knocking on the heavy front door and there she is feeling like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music with now here else to go. Weighing in at 240 pounds and covered in tattoos, Philo doesn’t look much like Julie Andrews. And with her penchant for smoking, swearing and eating, she’s hardly an ideal candidate for the sisterhood. But Philo is desperate. She’s on the run from her husband, Tommo, and she needs refuge. The good sisters take her under their wing, and before long she finds a new selfconfidence, and a new role at the centre of the beleaguered community. With a heart as big as her waistband, there’s plenty of love to go round, but Philo knows that, sooner or later, she will need to face up to the cracks in her own life her wayward husband and son, the dark secret she’s been running from for as long as she can remember. At the core of this warmhearted and poignant novel is the oncethriving docks community where the author grew up. This story is a celebration of the people who once lived there, and a protest at the official neglect that led to its demise.

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The Encyclopedia of Ireland: Brian Lalor, General Editor
The Encyclopedia of Ireland is the most comprehensive singlevolume reference work ever published about Ireland. Meticulously detailed, it is a treasure store of information, education, entertainment, and enlightenment. Its range is astounding as it covers the entire spectrum of Irish achievement in all fields of human endeavour throughout recorded history. The conventional subjects are all here: literature and language, history, geography, economics, sociology, the arts and music. But other subjects, often neglected in Irish reference books, are also given their due place, such as science, engineering, astronomy and sport. With more than 5000 original articles written by 950 different contributors and over 700 illustrations, mainly in colour, The Encyclopedia of Ireland is unique. Unique in scope, in conception, in ambition, in execution, in the vast array of facts that it contains, in the distinction of its design, in its total commitment to quality there is no book about Ireland remotely like it. This book should be in every home within the country, and in every home throughout the world where Ireland is a ‘place that matters’. It is the only reference book about Ireland anyone will every need.

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The Woman’s Daughter by Dermot Bolger
Born in secret, the woman’s daughter has spent her life hidden in a bedroom, gaining only a tenuous idea of the world outside her window through her mother’s nightly tales of Dublin’s factories and ballrooms in the 1960s, of the time when the family first came to the new suburb on the back of a swaying lorry, and of the incestuous love which led to her clandestine existence. But, unknown to the woman, her secret is just one in a long line kept hidden in the place, and as the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, the pattern of previous lives is slowly revealed. This novel is perhaps Bolger’s most extraordinary and has been described as a ‘wild frothing poetic odyssey 85 a brilliant and ambitious piece of writing.’ Originally published in 1991

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The Journey Home by Dermot Bolger
When Francis Hanrahan, the shy child of grey suburban streets, meets Shay, an older, wilder image of himself, he is quickly cast out into nighttime Dublin a world of drugs, corruption and allnight drinking sessions in bars and snooker halls. But behind their friendship looms the shadow of the two Plunkett brothers (a government minister and a property developer) whose greed and desire threatens them, and Cait, the teenage girl they befriend. Is this a dangerous, thrilling existence or a perilous path to adulthood? One of the most controversial of contemporary Irish novels, The Journey Home is Bolger’s most uncompromising book. Originally published in 1990.

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My Left Foot by Christy Brown
Christy Brown was born a victim of cerebral palsy. But the helpless, lolling baby concealed the brilliantly imaginative and sensitive mind of a writer who would take his place among the giants of Irish literature. This book is Christy Brown’s own story. He recounts his childhood struggle to learn to read, write, paint and finally type, with the toe of his left foot. In this manner he wrote his bestseller, Down All the Days. My Left Foot was made into a major and critically acclaimed film starring Daniel DayLewis. Originally published in 1954.

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The Hard Life by Flann O’Brien
Into the household of the fractious Mr. Collopy come two orphaned boys, Manus and Finbar. While Mr. Collopy is engaged in humanitarian work on behalf of women to establish ladies’ lavatories in Dublin the boys grow up amidst the odour of good whiskey and bad cooking. The elder brother Manus proves himself a master of business. From teaching people by post to walk the tightrope, he graduates to enlightening the world at his ‘London University Academy’. As Mr. Collopy travels to Rome, to enlist the help of the Pope, Finbarr watches and waits 85 This classic of modern Irish literature was originally published in 1961.

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Various Lives of Keats and Chapman and the Brother by Flann O’Brien
The cream of Flann O’Brien’s comic tourdeforce, the Keats and Chapman stories began in O’Brien’s column in the Irish Times. He called them ‘studies in literary pathology’ monstrously tall tales that explore the very limits of the shaggy dog story. As one critic wrote, they will accumulate the fantasy to the point of sadism, and then cash home with the flat, desolating pun. The Brother is one of O’Brien’s funniest creations. He is the archetypal Dublin man an authority on every one of mankind’s ills, from the common cold to the court case. Forget the experts, the Brother knows best Originally published in 1976.

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Nothing Green: A Memoir by Evelyn Doyle
Evelyn Doyle’s first book her account of her childhood, and of the historic legal battle her father fought to regain custody of his children became a worldwide bestseller, and her experiences inspired Pierce Brosnan’s film. This book continues the story; it is every bit as compelling and touching as its predecessor. For, in spite of their muchpublicized legal victory, times are hard and Evelyn returns to the same grinding poverty. When ‘new mammy’ Jessie’s relationship with her father becomes strained, the twelveyearold girl increasingly finds herself the brunt of their criticism and dissatisfaction. And matters don’t improve when the family moves to England to find work. Part memoir, part social history, set against a vivid backdrop of 1960s Dublin and England, Evelyn’s remarkable journey takes the reader through her adolescence, working in Woolworths and as a weaver in a mill in Yorkshire, explaining her repeated attempts to run away. Her inexplicably troubled relationship with Jessie casts a long shadow over her life until the story’s unforgettable denouement. A poignant and uplifting memoir.

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Spike Milligan: The Biography by Humphrey Carpenter
Irelandborn Spike Milligan became a genius of British comedy. For five decades he was to be one of the UK’s most influential comics and inspire enormous affection in his many listeners, viewers and readers. In this book the author draws on Spike’s own writings and on those closest to him to chart the life of this most complex man. He uncovers a personality that could be as difficult, contradictory and misanthropic as it was passionate, sensitive and inspired. The first significant tragedy of Spike’s life came at the end of an idyllic childhood when he moved to the foggy, Depressionridden London. The author traces the roots of the manic depression that was to keep so firm a hold on Spike to his war experiences in early adulthood. He brings vividly to life the era of the 50s which gave rise to the biggest voice in comedy with ‘The Goons’ and, with the help of neverbeforeseen letters from Spike to his producers, follows his endlessly stormy relationship with the BBC. Revealed here are the extramarital relationships that he carried off in parallel with his three marriages. The picture that emerges is seldom straightforward, but the author has created a spellbinding portrait of this tortured genius.

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Leaves from the Fig Tree by Diana Duff
Raised by her eccentric grandparents at Annes Grove in County Cork, an Irish stately home famed for its beautiful gardens, Diana Duff grew up in an enchanted world of family ghosts, buried treasure and banshees. Hers was a magical childhood, filled with a wealth of fascinating characters: Doyle, the diminutive and belligerent stablehand, GreatUncle Beresford, who conversed with God in the bath, and the redoubtable Molly O’Reilly, cook, housekeeper and the heart of the household. At the age of 18, Diana left Anne grove in search of the excitement, glamour and heady freedom of 1950s Kenya. After working as a standin for Grace Kelly, and as a short stint as a nurse, she married an office in the Colonial Service and they moved to an isolated house in the heart of Kikuyuland at the height of the bloody Mau Mau rebellion. On the move again in the 60s, Diana and her family relocated to Tanganyika, where she founded the first mixedrace nursery school in East Africa before a transfer of power saw the family shifting to a South Africa cruelly divided by apartheid. An utterly beguiling memoir.

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Irish Pages: The Justice Issue edited by Chris Agee
Irish Pages is a Belfast journal combining Irish, European and international perspectives. It seeks to create a novel literary space in Northern Ireland adequate to the unfolding cultural potential of the new political dispensation. This issue contains: Poem & Essay by Wendell Berry; Today Was the 11th of December by Samuel Menashe; The Diarists (extract from a novel) by Francis Harvey; Prose and Three Poems by Seamus Heaney; Six Poems by John F. Deane; Three Poems by Gerard Smyth; One Poem by Connie Roberts; Portraits of Artists by John Minihan; Our Cosmic Habitat by Sir Martin Rees; Three Poems by Eamon Grennan; Twelve Poems an Prose by Michael Longley; Punishing Horses by Robert Zaller; Four Etchings by Alfonso Monreal; Last Stand in the Kalahari by Mogetsk Kaboikanyo; Dante’s Inferno (extract from a new translation) by Ciaran Carson. In Homage: W.G. Sebald: The Marienbad Elegy (a final poem) by W.G. Sebald; Redundant Epitaphs by Michael Hamburger; A Parting from Max Sebald by Hans Magnus Enzenberger; A Mystery and a Confession by Tess Jaray. Two poems by Angus Calder; The Stepinac File by Chris Agee; Sarajevo Poems by Vojka Djikic and Marko Vesovic; The Wasteland by Christian Salmon. From the Irish Archive: Five Essays by Eoghan O Tuairisc; A Poem by Greg Delanty; Ag an Staisiun (short story) by Micheal O Conghaile; Three poems by Cathal O Searcaigh; a Poem by Ted Deppe; The Braan Salmon and Six Poems by Kathleen Jamie; The Prospect of Cornucopia by Simon Fairlie. The Publishing Scene: Doom and Expertise by Chris Arthur; Dot.com Lite by Andrew Crumey.

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Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler edited by Chris Agee
Hubert Butler (19001991), Kilkenny manofletters, remains a largely undiscovered treasure of Irish literature. Proud of his Protestant heritage while still deeply committed to the Irish nation, he sought in his life and writing to ensure that Ireland would grow into an open and pluralistic society. Widelytravelled, Butler wrote on a great variety of subjects both within and outside Ireland, not least concerning his experience of the Balkans, which remains deeply relevant to the recent history of the region. With unfailing prescience, he also wrote on topics as diverse as the Irish Saints, archaeology, local history, the AngloIrish Big House, the Irish Literary Revival, nationalism, Partition, Mitteleuropa, Stalinism, and the Holocaust. An early exponent of ecological perspectives, his abiding themes are a faith in the local; a belief in the value of the small nation; the dangers of globalization and mass communications; and the enduring search for humane community amidst ‘the civilisation of the anthill.’ In October 2000, The Hubert Butler Centenary Celebration became the first conference devoted to the life and work of his extraordinary Irish countryman, European and citizen of the world. In the historic venue of Kilkenny Castle, writers, friends and family met for a weekend of reflection, reminiscence, conversation and debate. Out of this remarkable gathering comes this book which brings together, in original or revised form, all nineteen of the keynote contributions to the conference, as well as a selection of historic photographs and two comprehensive bibliographies.

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Drawing Support 3: Murals and Transition in the North of Ireland by Bill Rolston
This longawaited third volume of photographs of political wall murals looks at the period 19962003. The book covers both loyalist and republican murals 114 in all, reproduced in full colour. The murals reflect the period leading up to the Good Friday Agreement and what the author calls ‘the frustrating politics of transition’. The themes of murals in Republican areas include political prisoners, sectarian harassment, memorials around the 20th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes, the RUC?PSNI and British Army, plastic bullets and international security. Loyalist murals also cover memorials, as well as the peace process, mythology, loyalist military groups, territory, Ulster Scots history and culture, and Royalty. In this collection the author also includes a number of unique photographs of murals from inside the Hblocks taken shortly before the prison’s closure.

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Celtic Wisdom by Carl McColman
This book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of Celtic Wisdom. It covers: the spiritual history of the Celts, from ancient shamans to renowned druids to modern neopagans; the magical realm of spirit otherwise known as the otherworld; the mysticism of the natural world, from standing stones to holy wells; and why myths and stories are so important to the Celtic tradition. It also explains: the Seven Dimensions of Celtic Wisdom; the central place of nature in Celtic tradition; Tools and rituals for the practicing Druid; Gods and Goddesses of the Irish and continental Celts; The citizens of the world, including faeries and ancestors; the grail: the ultimate symbol of the mystical quest; the Ogham: divination of the sacred trees; the Wheel of the Year: Celtic spirituality through the seasons; Celtic virtues: holiness, hospitality, honour and heroism (and humour)

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Patrick Kavanagh: A Life by Antoinette Quinn
Seamus Heaney has coupled Patrick Kavanagh (190467) with W.B.Yeats as the two most important figures in twentiethcentury Irish poetry. Patrick Kavanagh was born in County Monaghan, the son of a cobblercumsmall farmer. He left school at thirteen but continued to educate himself, reading and writing poetry in his spare time. In 1929 he began contributing verses to the Irish Statesman and was soon publishing in Irish and English journals. His first collection, Ploughman and Other Poems, appeared in 1936 and was followed by the autobiography The Green Fool (still available in paperback) in 1938. In 1939 he moved to Dublin where he spent the rest of his life as a freelance writer. He first emerged as an important literary voice with his long poem, the Great Hunger, in 1942. Other collections and the novel Tarry Flynn (also still available in paperback) appeared in the following decades to growing critical acclaim. Kavanagh was also part of the social and literary Dublin for almost thirty years in the company of a gifted generation of writers, among them Flann O’Brien and Brendan Behan. His position in the history of Irish poetry is secure. This biography traces his life and work in a comprehensive and accessible manner, and is essential reading for all interested in Irish poetry.

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Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA by Brendan Anderson
Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man all his life. ‘I was born in a united Ireland,’ he says. ‘I want to die in a united Ireland.’ This ambition has motivated his entire life. It has been a life of imprisonment, of hunger strikes, of being on the run, in safe houses, in action, and latterly in talks and negotiations. IRA activists rarely, if ever, speak about their lives or their organization; but in this book Cahill gives his full and frank story, his viewpoint, his experiences from Northern Irish prison cells of the 1940s when the birch and catoninetails were still in use, to the corridors of power in Washington DC when the Good Friday Agreement was being negotiated. Sentenced to death in 1942, he describes how he prepared to meet his fate; though reprieved, he remembers vividly the awful day when his cellmate and close friend was executed. He tells of the visit he made to Colonel Gaddafi to smuggle arms and ammunition, and the fateful voyage of the Claudia; Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin; the highdrama helicopter escape of IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Jail. He reveals how he rose through the ranks of the IRA and the circumstances of his deportation from the United States. This is the story of an extraordinary journey, Cahill’s own life mirroring the growth, changes and development of the republican movement as a whole through more than sixty years of intense involvement.

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W.B. Yeats: A Life Vol. II The ArchPoet by R. F. Foster
The acclaimed first volume of this definitive biography of William Butler Yeats (now available in paperback) left him in his fiftieth year, at a crossroads in his life. The subsequent quartercentury surveyed in this book takes in his rediscovery of advanced nationalism and his struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued pursuit of supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was writing his greatest poems: ‘The Fisherman’, and ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in their stark simplicity; the magnificently complex sequences on the Troubles and Civil War; the Byzantium poems; and the radically compressed last work some of it literally written on his death bed. The drama of his life is mapped against the history of the Irish revolution and the new Irish State founded in 1922. Yeats’s many political roles and his controversial involvement in a rightwing movement during the early 1930s are covered more closely than ever before, and his complex and passionate relationship with the developing history of his country remains a central theme. Throughout this book, the genesis, alteration, and presentation of his work (memoirs and polemic as well as poetry) are explored through his private and public life. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats’s friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment, and verve. Yeats constantly recreated himself and his work, believing that art was ‘not the chief end of life but an accident in one’s search for reality’: a search which brought him again and again back to his governing preoccupations, sex and death. He also held that ‘all knowledge is biography’, a belief reflected in this study of one of the greatest lives of modern times.

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Hope and History: Making Peace in Ireland by Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams has brought the oldest revolutionary movement in Ireland on an extraordinary journey from armed insurrection to active participation in government. An author as well as an activist, he brings a vivid sense of immediacy and a writer’s understanding of narrative to this story of the triumph of hope in what was long considered an intractable bloody conflict. He conveys the tensions of the peace process, the sense of teetering on the brink, and he has a sharp eye and acute ear for them humorous foibles of political allies and enemies alike. He reveals previously unpublished details of the peace process: secret contacts with the Catholic Church; the inside story on the covert talks between republicans and the British government; the IrishAmerican role and meetings in the White House; the importance of the South African role; differences within republicanism and the emergence of dissidents; the breakdown of the first IRA cessation. He speaks candidly about being shot, and discloses details of his discussions with the IRA. He details for the first time ever the secret talks to reinstate the IRA cessation, involving Irish, British and US governments, the IRA leadership and then opposition leader Tony Blair; and he describes the making of the Good Friday Agreement, what was agreed and what was promised. He paints revealing portraits of the other leading characters in the drama that was acted out through ceasefires and standoffs, discussions and confrontations. Amongst these are Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, Mo Mowlam, Martin McGuinness, Albert Reynolds, Bill & Hilary Clinton, Jean Kennedy Smith, David Trimble, John Hume, Nelson Mandela, John Bruton and Charles Haughey. As the preeminent republican strategist of his generation, he provides the first authentic account of the principles and tactics underpinning modern Irish republicanism. And in a world where peace processes are needed more urgently than ever, this book provides a template for conflict resolution processes internationally.

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The Dublin Review Number 12 Autumn 2003 edited by Brendan Barrington
This issue contains: Colm Toibin: Emmet and the historians; What we do with photographs by Brian Dillon; Anne Enright: Holles Street Revisited; Diarmaid Ferriter on the Bureau of Military History; ‘A Member of the Public’ by Judy Kravis; David Wheatley: Somewhere between Coolock and Donaghmede; Stories by Anthony Caleshu and Tom Lee.

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The Poet and the Piper by Seamus Heaney and Liam O’Flynn
27 poems, read by Seamus Heaney, with musical accompaniment by Liam O’Flynn on Uilleann pipes, Rod McVey on Harmonium and Stephen Cooney on guitar. Includes: Digging, Bogland, At the Wellhead, The Otter, The Yellow Bittern, The Tollund Man, Midterm Break, Clearances 3, Clearances 5, Two Lorries, A Call, Seeing Things Section 3, St. Kevin and the Blackbird, the Annals Say, Postscript. Liner essay by Ciaran Carson.

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Into the Quiet Stream: Selected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Combining the poetry of W.B. Yeats, the sounds of nature and a range of traditional Irish airs, Ernie Lyons and Tony Deffely present some of Yeats’s best loved poems in a haunting and evocative way. The poems are embedded in the relaxing and dramatic natural and musical sounds of old Ireland. Poems included are: The Stolen Child, To a Child dancing in the Wind, He hears the Cry of the Sedge, September 1913, Down by the Salley Gardens, Never Give all the Heart, Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland, Ephemera, The Lake Isle of Inishfree, Politics, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Song of Wandering Aengus, Easter 1916, He wishes for the Clothes of Heaven, The Cap and Bells, The White Birds, The Host of the Air, Under Ben Bulben. Presented by Ernie Lyons and Tony Deffely.

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