Writing Home explores the lives and Ulster Heritage of MacLaverty, CS Lewis, Brian Moore and Louis MacNeice.
in ‘Writing Home’, each week a different presenter will find out why the authors Bernard MacLaverty, C S Lewis, Brian Moore and Louis MacNeice left Northern Ireland but kept returning to the land where they grew up.
In the first programme of the series BBC presenter Peter Curran traces the
career and early life of Bernard MacLaverty.
Peter Curran's favourite writer from Northern Ireland has sold millions of
books worldwide, had two screenplays and four television plays filmed and
has written successful radio plays.
Peter explains Bernard MacLaverty’s appeal: “People all around
the world read the stories of this former north Belfast lab technician who
has the gift of being able to find and amplify the heartbeat of small town
life.
MacLaverty uses words with beautiful precision and his understated style
has made him accessible to readers from Nairobi to Norway - as well as Northern
Ireland. Many of us first recognised ourselves in literature for the first
time when reading MacLaverty's work.
He's reached an even wider audience with successful television and film adaptations,
which have lifted his work off the page without losing his strong sense of
naturalism.
MacLaverty has lived nearly half his life in Scotland. But the inspiration
for nearly all of his writing comes from his early life in the Forties, Fifties
and Sixties, when he grew up in Belfast.”
MacLaverty grew up in the quiet, residential street of Atlantic Avenue, Belfast.
His father, Johnny, was a commercial artist and died when MacLaverty was
12, which led to a big change in family life. MacLaverty's books often deal
with 12-year-old boys in difficult circumstances, a theme that may recall
his own difficulties in dealing with his father's death.
MacLaverty's love of Ireland still persists - though when asked what his
idea of earthly paradise would be, his answer encompassed both Ireland and
Scotland:
'Layde Graveyard in the Glens of Antrim on a hot summer's day looking out
over the sea towards Scotland. It's the place where my friends and I spent
long, lazy teenage days, chewing stems of grass.'
Grace Notes, MacLaverty's most acclaimed book so far, was shortlisted for
the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel brings together many of his familiar themes,
with the Troubles in the background. Grace, a young composer and single mother,
is a lonely, vulnerable outsider who is estranged from her family and her
lover.
So what next for Bernard MacLaverty? At the age of 60, he has directed his
first short film Bye-Child’, based on a Seamus Heaney poem.
He acknowledges that Northern Ireland will continue to be a source of inspiration
for his work, because he's obsessed by the rhythms of the speech of his homeland.
MacLaverty believes they're like nowhere else - and that's what he tries
to capture in his writing.
Queen of Comedy, Nuala McKeever presents the second programme of ‘Writing Home’ and explores the life and works of C S Lewis.
Nuala confesses:“As an adult I was shocked to learn that C S Lewis actually came from Belfast! Although he is one of Ulster's most widely read and acclaimed authors, he is not as well known by his fellow country people as he should be. I read his partial autobiography "Surprised by Joy" to explore the details of his birth and childhood and his relationship with the Ulster of his youth - a land that fed his very active imagination.”
The third programme in the series focuses on Brian Moore
and local actor Dan Gordon explains why he admires the author. Dan was drawn
to the ingenuity and directness of Brian Moore's novels after seeing the
dramatisation of ‘The Temptation of Eileen Hughes’.
Moore's flair for writing empathetic female roles convinced Gordon to discover
more about this talented Ulster writer.
Ulster-born Brian Moore became one of Ireland's wild geese when he followed
Wilde, Joyce and Beckett to build his reputation far from these shores. Moore
became one of the few genuine masters of the contemporary novel - Graham
Greene once named Moore as his favourite living author.
The last subject in the series features Belfast-born poet Louis MacNeice, who has been described as one of the brightest and most talented poets of the century and writer Glenn Patterson presents the case for this Ulster man who wrote, what’s been quoted, as some of the most beautiful and memorable lyrics of the last century.
Viewers can find out more about the authors and their work on the Get Writing BBC website.