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To work. To my own office, my own job, MacNeice was awarded the CBE in the 1958 New Year’s Honours Not matching pictures, but inventing sound, list. He recalled his conversation with The Queen: Precalculating microphone and knob “Herself asked me ‘What do you do?’ and I said, ‘Well, I do radio. I also write.’ She said: ‘Have you been doing it long?’” In homage to the human voice. From Autumn Sequel (1954) 43 MacNeice’s response was to direct his energies towards his radio work. His output in the following years varied greatly in range and scale: in 1955 alone he produced programmes on the Nile, Yorkshire and Delhi. In 1957 MacNeice received an Honorary D.Litt from Queen’s University in Belfast, and published a new collection of poems, Visitations.

“I like to think that my latest short poems are on the whole more concentrated and better organized than my earlier ones, relying more on syntax and bony feature than on bloom or frill or the floating image. I should also like to think that sometimes they achieve a blend of ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’, marrying the element of wit to the sensuous-mystical element.” Visit of Queen Elizabeth II MacNeice, on Visitations (1957) to the BBC, 1953

42

In 1958 MacNeice was sent on a BBC television training course. He adapted two Strindberg plays for the small screen. But he always preferred radio. The following year he undertook a lecture tour of South African colleges and universities.

In March 1961, MacNeice’s new collection Solstices was published.

“To assess one’s own development is difficult. I would say of myself that I have become progressively more humble in the face of my material and therefore less ready to slap poster paint all over it.” MacNeice on Solstices (1961)

During this period the BBC Features Department was visited by a team of management consultants. Their conversation with MacNeice Accepts has become the stuff of legend: appointment to Established Staff, 1957

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Consultants: “We see, Mr MacNeice, that during the past six In the summer of 1961 MacNeice renegotiated his contract with months you have produced only one programme. Can you tell us the BBC, becoming a part-time employee. This was something of a what you were doing the rest of the time?” relief both to MacNeice and to the BBC. MacNeice: “Thinking.” 45 “Study of a sensitive and sympathetic man getting blunted and possibly corrupted by finding himself in the wrong job.” MacNeice’s proposal for a new broadcast play, The Administrator, March 1960

By this time, MacNeice was drinking 44 heavily.

“A good deal of Features Department’s time in those days was spent in either the Stag or, further down the road, the George. This was the way that Louis worked, but God, he did get through a lot of work as well.” Anthony Thwaite, Archive Hour: Louis MacNeice (2007) MacNeice’s Staff Card

Cover for The Mad Islands & The “I believe that this new arrangement will stimulate MacNeice to Administrator creative activity in fields outside radio, and that this, in turn, will have a beneficial effect on his radio work when he returns “How Louis wrote so much, read so much, travelled so much, to work for us.” drank so much and had so much time for his friends baffled me. Laurence Gilliam Once we were walking past the old Group Theatre when he stopped suddenly and addressed me seriously. 1962 and 1963 proved a period of extraordinary creativity, with ‘Are you a drinking man?’ MacNeice completing the poems for his collection The Burning ‘No, I wouldn’t call myself one, I drink irregularly but seldom Perch, as well as writing book 46 seriously.’ reviews, a book on astrology, ‘I drink very regularly and very seriously.’” and delivering the Cambridge John Boyd, The Middle of My Journey (1990) Clark Lectures.

Cover for The Burning Perch

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In July 1963 he recorded an unscripted talk on his childhood years for John Boyd. Broadcast on the BBC’s Third Programme, Childhood Memories remains the only extant recording of the poet talking about his own life.

“. . . the McCanns have just lodged their visiting poet who by noon will cross from the Elbow Room to the studios in Ormeau Avenue, and deliver his talk, unscripted, on ‘Childhood Memories’; whose sleep now, if sleep it is, remains unbroken through the small, insensible hours between the whiskey nightcap and a breakfast of whiskey.” Peter McDonald, ‘The Neighbours’

In August 1963 MacNeice visited Yorkshire to gather sound effects for his radio play Persons from Porlock.

“I was very glad to hear that this had been accepted but am now somewhat distressed to hear that you want a different title . . . it would break my heart if either the word ‘person’ or the name ‘Porlock’ disappeared from the title . . . I could easily add a sub-title – something like ‘A Study in 20th Century Frustration’.” MacNeice memo to Assistant Head of Features, February 1963

The programme involved recording 47 underground. MacNeice, anxious that the sounds captured would be absolutely accurate, insisted on going down a Yorkshire pothole with a BBC engineer. He got wet, caught a chill and developed viral pneumonia. He was admitted to hospital on 27 August, and died on 3 September.

MacNeice circa 1963

“MacNeice’s premature death at the age of fifty-five had shocked us. We felt bereaved of a father-figure whom we had only recently been getting to know.” Michael Longley

MacNeice’s funeral was held on Saturday, 7 September 1963, in St John’s Wood Church in London. His ashes are buried in Carrowdore churchyard in County Down.

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The tributes were laudatory: “As a radio writer, he had almost no rivals. Many distinguished poets and dramatists have contributed to the radio form but none “It seems almost grotesque to write about Louis MacNeice in the have used radio as a principal medium of expression so consistently past tense. His sudden death (aged fifty-five) from bronchial and over so long a span of time.” pneumonia makes no sense or meaning. He always seemed Christopher Holmes writing in the Radio Times (1965) destined for a long career, one who would survive, a man possessed of immense staying-power and a mind like a dynamo; “Louis MacNeice was a cat who walked by himself. He had a of natural distinction and dignity, as Apollonian as his friend Dylan quality of great stillness, as he watched at Lord’s or Twickenham, Thomas was Dionysian.” in a Delhi bazaar or a Dublin pub, but there was always a sense of ‘Louis MacNeice: A Tribute’ by Cyril Connolly (1963) restrained movement and energy conserved for the decisive spring.” Obituary, The Times (4 September, 1963) “I am confident that posterity will sustain my conviction, that Louis MacNeice’s later poems show an advance upon his earlier, are 50 more certain in their technique, brilliant though that always was, and more moving, but even if I thought otherwise, I should still admire him for risking failure rather than being content to repeat himself successfully.” From W.H. Auden’s Memorial Address (1963)

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W.H. Auden, 1964 List of personal possessions collected from MacNeice’s BBC office after his death

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The Features Department, which 51 had encouraged and nurtured the art of imaginative writing for radio, was disbanded early in 1965, as the BBC further sought to respond to the challenges and opportunities of television.

Louis MacNeice, 1952 The posthumously published poem ‘Thalassa’ is one of MacNeice’s finest: The Burning Perch, MacNeice’s final collection of poetry, was published shortly after his death. Put out to sea, ignoble comrades, Whose record shall be noble yet; “From the abounding memory source of ‘Soap Suds’ to the Butting through scarps of moving marble as-it-is-now-and-ever-shall-be mythic take on ‘Charon’, the book The narwhal dares us to be free; had swiftness and inevitability and left an indelible mark.” By a high star our course is set, Seamus Heaney Our end is Life. Put out to sea. “He seemed like his later work, grim and sardonic, scored by long First published in the London Magazine (1964) experience, though there was a wistful nobility too. If the world he loved so much had let him down, the long head rose above it – MacNeice’s legacy is not only to the BBC and to the many as his best work now rises above that of his contemporaries.” poets and writers from Northern Ireland who have been Derek Mahon influenced by him: it is above all to the generations of readers and listeners who have been inspired by his work. “His poetry reconciles traditionalism and Modernism. In a curious way MacNeice did more than other twentieth-century poets to test poetry against the century. He tested it against the claims of politics and philosophy, against the pressures of cities and war. And he did not take the outcome of these tests, or of anything else, for granted.” Edna Longley, Louis MacNeice: A Critical Study (1988)

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Short Reflections on MacNeice

52 Bernard MacLaverty World is crazier and more of it than we think, Louis MacNeice was born in Brookhill Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion Avenue, Belfast, close by the A tangerine and spit the pips and feel Waterworks. This was a couple of The drunkenness of things being various. minutes’ walk from where I lived in Atlantic Avenue. As a teenager I would walk past this house and feel awe that Bernard MacLaverty somebody so brilliant with words had Born in Belfast, Bernard MacLaverty was educated at Queen’s lived so close. The first poem of his I University Belfast. His first short-story collection Secrets was came across was 'Prayer before Birth'. published in 1977. His novels Lamb and Cal were memorably In its lunge at language it reminded me adapted for film in 1983 and 1984 and Grace Notes (1997) of Gerard Manley Hopkins with its was nominated for the Booker Prize. His television play My Dear powerful rhythmic drive and internal rhymes and alliteration. Palestrina was produced by BBCNI in 1980. A long-time resident 'Bagpipe Music' was a comic version of these strengths. of Glasgow, he regularly broadcasts with BBC Radio 3 and BBC Scotland. MacNeice's poems force you to remember them. (I like Don Paterson's definition of a poem as 'a little machine for remembering itself'.) Later I would come to love the love poems. And Autumn Journal is still as powerful and fresh as the day it was written – predicting and condemning 'men who shoot straight in the cause of crooked thinking'. To end with a book as good as The Burning Perch (1963) means that MacNeice died while still creating his best work. Sadly he could not take Yeats's advice 'to go empty to his grave'. A number of years ago a group of Dublin sixth formers put together an anthology of greatly loved poems chosen by a range of people. They asked me and (although it must be said that your favourite anything changes from day to day) I chose 'The introduction' by Louis MacNeice – a black and bitter piece of brilliance and wit. His greatness lies in his mastery of 'the hooks and eyes of words' and his awareness of the ordinary. From 'Snow',

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53 Derek Mahon Both were on the whiskey, the effect being to make Webb witty and MacNeice morose. We spoke to Webb and I tried in vain to get a response out of MacNeice, preferably some poetry talk. Perhaps, Eclogues between the Truculent frustrated by his reluctance, I got a bit truculent too. (What a pain I met him twice if you can call it in the neck I must have been.) They'd been to a rugby international meeting, and both times he was in rugby at Lansdowne Road, and MacNeice's report appeared the next mode. Calling one afternoon at the flat week in the New Statesman, its circulation higher then than now. in Regent's Park he shared with the He mentioned Dublin pubs and remarked on their 'aggressive' actress Mary Wimbush, we found him (bad mannered) students. We had been put in our place. watching rugby on TV and saying little. He died the following year. Constrained by his rugby-watching silence, I said little myself. What did I Not exactly Keats and Coleridge, is it? But it's seldom a good idea expect, poetry talk? (A big fan, I'd recently read his latest collection to meet your admired authors; you will often be disappointed. Solstices, which I thought disappointing; this must have been 1962.) (Not always: Keats wasn't, for one.) Not meaning any harm, they We watched some rugby and then it was time to go. I got the may take no notice of you; or, meaning a little harm, they may put impression that, even without the rugby, he would have been you down. Besides, they are generally older, wearier and less uncommunicative. The curtains were closed and I saw only a grave forthcoming than you might wish, and words of wisdom will be few. grey head and a sombre equine face; though literally long in the Such was my experience of MacNeice. I was just some Belfast tooth, he had 'presence'. I was virtually ignored but didn't mind, whippersnapper of course. He was in rugby mode; though once aware that, while to me he was the great poet, to him I was a nifty scrum-half, I'd lost interest in rugby. He didn't want to be nobody in particular. bothered (why should he?) and he was tired of words, of which he had written a great many. Tired too, perhaps, of life itself: it's there Grand houses in Regent's Park were not my usual ambience. in the last poems. But you knew that, even if you got on the wrong I was much struck by this one, by the elegant Mary Wimbush, side of him, he wouldn't clobber you like some. His eyes were kind, and by the voices. and it was his eyes that spoke. The mouth might snarl, the gnashers flash, but that was just his manner: the gaze was a speculative and Louis was nasal Oxford, a sonorous growl, Mary pure BBC circa not unfriendly one. He seemed like his later work, grim and 1960; those there of my own age had already adopted 'Mockney' sardonic, scored by long experience, though there was a wistful and a shared idiom of branché, cool and ciao. nobility too. If the world he loved so much had let him down, the long head rose above it – as his best work now rises above that of Some months later I was sitting with other students in a well-known his contemporaries. Dublin pub and noticed two older men at a nearby table, one talkative, one taciturn. The taciturn one was MacNeice. With the bumptiousness of youth we went over and introduced ourselves; Derek Mahon he didn't remember me of course. He wore some kind of an Born in Belfast, the poet Derek Mahon was educated at Trinity anorak, looked unkempt, and acknowledged us with a polite snarl College, Dublin and the Sorbonne. His poetry collections include and a sidelong flash of the horsy teeth. The talkative one, Bill Night-Crossing (1968), The Hudson Letter (1995) and The Yellow Webb, books editor of the Manchester Guardian, as it then was, Book (1997). His journalistic posts include those of Features Editor chuckled at our intrusion. He was a lively man in tweeds, with a at Vogue and Literary Editor of the New Statesman. A member of short pepper-and-salt beard, who had put himself in charge of the Aosdána, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize in 2007 in truculent Louis. recognition of a lifetime’s achievement in literature.

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54 Edna Longley 55 Gerald Dawe To quote 'Snow': MacNeice's poetry is I think I first came across Louis MacNeice 'more of it than we think,/ Incorrigibly when I was at Orangefield Boys' School plural'. It reproduces the sensory assault in Belfast in the Sixties. One of the set of existence 'On the tongue on the eyes texts for the 'A' Level in English Literature on the ears in the palms of one's hands'. was the Faber Book of Modern Verse, an He turns this inside out to imagine anthology edited by Michael Roberts, 'not-being'. On its socio-political level, which included a couple of MacNeice his poetry distinguishes in a uniquely poems. Immediately I was very taken by subtle way between what is owed to the the contemporary sound of his poetry, but individual and what to the community, also by the enigmatic, 'hidden' quality thus living up to the promise of his too. As if something wasn't being given statement in 1935: 'The individualist is away lightly. I bought MacNeice's Selected Poems, edited by W. H. an atom thinking about himself (Thank God I am not as other men); Auden, and have been reading him ever since – the poetry, mainly, the communist, too often, is an atom having ecstasies of self-denial but also his criticism and the unfinished autobiography, The Strings are (Thank God I am one in a crowd).' On its metaphysical level, his False, all of which are sharp-eyed, questioning, and wear their poetry faces the whole issue of the self in the world: learning lightly. I've also taken to a little-noticed book of MacNeice's, an early work, I Crossed the Minch, as well as his wonderful study, Windows between you and the world Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay, which really should be republished. Keep out the cold, keep out the fright; Then why does your reflection seem MacNeice's 'career' as a lecturer, critic and broadcaster conceals how much he lived under the surface – the poems were his life-raft, So lonely in the moving night? his oxygen, his escape route, a way of understanding himself. I often ('Corner Seat') think how tragic it was that he died so young, relatively speaking. The Burning Perch, his last book of poems, is certainly among his And on its aesthetic level, his poetry reconciles traditionalism and best, and had he survived the strains and stresses of a fairly battered Modernism. In a curious way MacNeice did more than other physical and emotional life, he could well, like Yeats, have written out twentieth-century poets to test poetry against the century. He tested of a great final surge and produced work into the Seventies and it against the claims of politics and philosophy, against the Eighties. That wasn't to be. But the Collected Poems of Louis pressures of cities and war. And he did not take the outcome MacNeice, edited with such care and attention by Peter McDonald, of these tests, or of anything else, for granted. is a timeless testament to one of the great poets from Ireland. I hope the rest of the world hears about Louis MacNeice, for he deserves From Louis MacNeice: A Critical Study (1988) the widest possible audience, now, more than ever.

Edna Longley Gerald Dawe Originally from Dublin, Edna Longley moved to Belfast in 1963. Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe was educated at Orangefield Boys' She is an internationally recognised critic on modern Irish and School, Belfast, the University of Ulster at Coleraine and the British poetry, with works including studies of Louis MacNeice and National University of Ireland, Galway. He has published six Edward Thomas. She is now Professor Emerita at Queen’s University collections of poetry, including The Morning Train (1999) and Lake Belfast (where she played a pivotal role in the creation of the Geneva (2003). He has also published The Proper Word: Collected Seamus Heaney Centre), a member of the Royal Irish Academy Criticism (2007) and (forthcoming) My Mother-City: A Memoir. and a British Academy Fellow. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.

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56 Leontia Flynn MacNeice's critics rightly stress his emphasis on flux and diversity. When I think of Louis MacNeice's In 'Train to Dublin' the various kinds of people and experiences poetry I tend to think about trains. observed or imagined can scarcely be contained by the equally 'Trains came threading quietly through jumbled, moving self: my dozing childhood,' he writes in 'Trains in the Distance' and if trains also Our half-thought thoughts divide in sifted wisps thread their way through MacNeice's Against the basic facts repatterned without pause, oeuvre, this is because, as he observes I can no more gather my mind up in my fist slyly in 'Train to Dublin', train-journeying Than the shadow of the smoke of this train upon the grass . . . comprises the greater part of existence: '. . . the trains carry us about. But not Part of MacNeice's legacy, I suppose, has been to show how a consistently so, / For during a tiny portion of our lives we are not in complex intelligence might move within an equally complex history, trains . . . '. When it isn't trains it might be cars or taxis. In 'Sunday responding to it. In terms of his ambivalent Northern Irishness Morning', 'Man's heart expands to tinker with his car', and 'a (which I've never much cared about), I also like that his restlessness fringe or two of the windy past' can be clutched from the speeding undermines ideas of rootedness and rural permanence: trains motor, while later poems like 'Hold-up' and 'The Taxis' explicitly are both part of the landscape and just as passing through. figure life as a weird ride in the back of a cab or on a bus. Finally though, I think it's the fluid patterning and 'repatterning' of his poetry that matters, and makes 'Train to Dublin' a thrilling It is this restless, journeying, perceiving aspect of MacNeice's journey in language. poetry that I love. Edna Longley has written that 'On its metaphysical level, his poetry faces the whole issue of the self in the world', citing his poem 'Corner Seat' as an example. Leontia Flynn Here the speaker's face is reflected in a train window: Leontia Flynn was born in County Down in 1974. In 2001 she won an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection, These Days (2004), Windows between you and the world won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection of the Year) in 2004, Keep out the cold, keep out the fright; and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. In the same Then why does your reflection seem year, she was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's 'Next So lonely in the moving night? Generation' poets.

If MacNeice's poetry brilliantly projects into language an image of the self on its trip through life, I also love the contemporary, particular feel of the world through which he moves. Over the delicate lyricism of much- anthologised poems like 'The Sunlight in The Garden' and 'Autobiography' – by which I first encountered his work – I came to prefer the urban busy-ness and crowdedness of 'Birmingham' and 'Belfast'. There's a democracy to the breadth of observations in a MacNeice poem. The voice recording its impressions seems historically determined and politically aware, and his world-view explicitly encompasses both high and low culture. 'Bagpipe Music' famously finds him at the low end – and the vehicular image recurs again: 'It's no go the Yogi-man, it's no go Blavatsky, /All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi'.

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Michael Longley "If he was going on to Dublin," Mercy explained, "I would cook him a full Ulster Fry with two duck eggs and a naggin of Bushmills. Glimpses of Louis MacNeice Always the same." When George first brought Louis home, their At Inst it was Joe Cowan, a dapper new friend kept them up late drinking and talking and singing. little Englishman with a pert moustache, He was having a break, but they both had teaching jobs and an who inspired in me (and, a little later, early start. Eventually Mercy suggested that they move Louis's camp in Derek Mahon) a devotion to poetry. bed between her bed and George's. "Would that help? I asked Thanks to the Unionist hegemony there him." He went to bed when they did, and he slept. "When I was was little or no Irish literature on the five the black dreams came; / Nothing after was quite the same." syllabus in the fifties. Joe Xeroxed poems by living Irish writers, Kavanagh, Round about 1961 Derek Mahon gave a paper on MacNeice to 57 MacNeice, Rodgers. He would hand the Trinity College Philosophical Society. The honoured guest was around the smudgy sheets. "Read that one aloud for us, Longley." W. R. Rodgers, and in the audience sat Hedli MacNeice and her I'd read MacNeice's 'Snow', say, or 'Sunday Morning' in a dim daughter Corinna (Bimba). Louis had recently left Hedli for Mary monotone. "Is the man a poet? Is the man a poet? I should say so! Wimbush, and Hedli had decamped from London to Kinsale where I should say so!" And he'd chortle and slap his thigh. she opened her excellent seafood restaurant The Spinnaker, a pioneering enterprise in those days. I spoke to Derek's paper. In my Sixth Form year my Latin master Maurice Fowler was forced Although Bertie Rodgers had drunk a good deal, he spoke brightly to go away to hospital in England. His vivacious wife Marjorie took about MacNeice the poet and MacNeice the broadcaster. Hedli his place for a year or so. She and I became friends. About this seemed pleased with the evening. I remember her walking arm in time she was getting to know Louis MacNeice, and raved about arm with Bertie towards Front Gate. Later in my rooms in Botany him. He clearly took to her and bestowed on her a name he thought Bay Derek and I gave Bertie a mug of milky Nescafe. The next suited her better, Maggie. Ever afterwards she insisted that close morning he was up by seven writing a piece for the New friends call her Maggie. She asked Louis to sign for me a copy of Statesman. A year or so later Derek told me that MacNeice was Autumn Sequel (my least favourite MacNeice volume!). She told me drinking up the road in McDaid's. "Let's go and introduce how hurt he had been by the negative reviews his books from this ourselves." I felt far too shy and uncertain. But Derek went. period had been receiving; that he would like, he claimed, to begin The account of their meeting is for him to tell. his life's work all over again. A year or so after his death in September 1963 Derek Mahon, Marjorie introduced me to her colleague at Victoria College, Seamus Heaney and I drove to MacNeice's grave in Carrowdore Mercy Hunter, and her husband the sculptor George McCann churchyard among the drumlins of County Down. We dawdled (Maguire in Autumn Sequel). George and Mercy told me that when between the graves, then signed the visitors' book, each Louis came to Ireland to research programmes for the BBC, his visits contemplating an elegy. MacNeice's premature death at the age of almost invariably coincided with important rugby matches at fifty-five had shocked us. We felt bereaved of a father-figure whom we Ravenhill or Lansdowne Road. He refused to fly and preferred the had only recently been getting to know. (Derek was the only one of us Liverpool to Belfast steamer. who had met him personally.) The return of his ashes to Ireland did feel like some kind of repatriation. When the three of us were next together Derek took from his pocket 'In Carrowdore Churchyard' and read it aloud. Seamus started to recite his poem, then crumpled it up. I wisely decided then and there not to make the attempt. Derek had produced the definitive elegy: it brilliantly spans the poles of MacNeice's imagination – colour and darkness, destruction and rebirth, the underworld and the earth's lovely surfaces:

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This, you implied, is how we ought to live – 58 Patricia Craig When I was at school in Belfast in the The ironical, loving crush of roses against snow, 1950s, the received wisdom was that Each fragile, solving ambiguity. So everything worthwhile in a cultural From the pneumonia of the ditch, from the ague sense had come from elsewhere. Of the blind poet and the bombed-out town you bring Literature was Milton and Keats, The all-clear to the empty holes of spring; Wordsworth and W.H. Davies. Yeats in his Celtic Twilight phase was just about Rinsing the choked mud, keeping the colours new. accepted, because the poems he wrote at that time were as far in spirit as one could get from the grim North. I knew Michael Longley nothing about W.R. Rodgers and his exhilarating refusal of Born in Belfast and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Michael dourness, the intrepid local allegiances of John Hewitt, or the Longley’s distinguished poetry collections include No Continuing thoughtful, illuminating verses of poets like Robert Greacen and Roy City (1969), Gorse Fires (1991) and Snow Water (2004). He was McFadden. And my ignorance extended beyond these and other awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2000 and the Queen’s Medal for poets: even Michael McLaverty, who taught in a school just up the Poetry in 2001. He collaborated with Douglas Carson on BBCNI road from where I lived, was a closed book to me. At some level, educational programmes in the 1970s. Corner of the Eye, a BBCNI though, I deplored this state of ignorance and was immensely profile of his life, was screened in 1988. relieved when it began to be amended – and the first local poet to affect my literary awareness was indeed Louis MacNeice.

Not that it was right to describe him as a ‘local poet’ – I knew that much. I knew of him first of all as a component of "MacSpaunday", the Auden-Spender-Day-Lewis-MacNeice quartet. But when I read and savoured lines like "I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries", "the street children play on the wet/pavements, hopscotch and marbles", "the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines . . ." I felt the North had a special claim to him. No one else, I thought, had tackled the inheritances of Ulster with a comparable power and pungency – and it pleased me that MacNeice's "mother city" was Belfast. He couldn't get away from that fact – and "cursed be he that curses his mother", he wrote – though much about the place appalled him. (He only relents towards Belfast in the chapter in Zoo called "A Personal Digression", in which a tinge of its allure at last becomes apparent to him.) Whatever distaste he felt for aspects of Ulster, though, he makes an invigorating business of their appraisal.

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For me, MacNeice was a heady discovery, back in 1960 or Peter McDonald thereabouts, and I understood that it really didn't matter a jot whether England, Ireland, Anglo-Ireland or Northern Ireland took The Neighbours possession of him. Try to pin him down under one heading, and In the single-bedroom flat I used to cry the night through he'll quickly evade categorisation by veering off into another, in the as my mother walked the floor with me, rocked me and fed me best way of the individualist or the shape-shifter. Snow and huge past the small, insensible hours, not to wake the neighbours; roses, King Billy on a banner, preparations for war on Primrose though often upstairs there might be half the Group Theatre Hill, a love affair in London: he takes it all in and imposes an going till daybreak – a tiny, bohemian airpocket: astonishing beauty and urbanity on all of it. It's just a great piece Jimmy Ellis (in the Group, before Z Cars), or Mary O'Malley, of luck for Belfast that his life began here. and over from next door, next door but one maybe, George McCann, Mercy Hunter, John Boyd and the BBC, talking politics or shop, intrigue or gossip the night through: Patricia Craig Born in Belfast, Patricia Craig is an acclaimed anthologist, editor, but perhaps on this occasion there's only the baby biographer and critic. Northern Irish life and literature has been her cutting in and out of silence in a high spare room focus in works such as The Rattle of the North: An Anthology of where the McCann's have just lodged their visiting poet Ulster Prose (1992), The Belfast Anthology (1999) and The Ulster who by noon will cross from The Elbow Room to the studios Anthology (2006). Her Brian Moore: A Biography (2002) is in Ormeau Avenue, and deliver his talk, unscripted, considered the definitive work on this Irish novelist. on 'Childhood Memories'; whose sleep now, if sleep it is, remains unbroken through the small, insensible hours between the whiskey nightcap and a breakfast of whiskey.

Peter McDonald Belfast-born poet and academic, Peter McDonald was educated at Methodist College in Belfast and University College, Oxford. His poetry collections include Biting the Wax (1989) and Pastorals (2004). He has published widely on Louis MacNeice and on contemporary 59 poets from Northern Ireland in works including Mistaken Identities: Poetry and Northern Ireland (1997) and in 2007 edited a new edition of MacNeice’s Collected Poems. He is currently a tutor at Christ Church, Oxford, and a lecturer for the University.

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60 Seamus Heaney Since then, MacNeice has been an abiding presence, larger and more luminous as the years go by, his contribution increasingly Before I encountered MacNeice's recognized and his importance ever more verified by the critical poetry on the page, I'd heard it read by and creative work of poetic heirs who have flourished during the the poet himself. The event must have last half century 'between the mountains and the gantries'. been organized by the English We have reached a point where MacNeice's time is not 'away Department at Queen's University some and somewhere else', but here and now. And here and now the time around 1960/61, because I moment has been marked, appropriately and magnificently, remember going across to Elmwood by Peter McDonald's centenary edition of Collected Poems. Church with other Honours English students and hearing MacNeice introduced by Professor Butter. Seamus Heaney But that, I'm afraid, is all I remember: a sense of occasion. From County Londonderry, Seamus Heaney was educated at Queen’s University Belfast. He taught at St Thomas’s Intermediate Still, when I graduated in 1961, MacNeice's Collected Poems School, Belfast and later at QUB, Carysfort, Harvard and Oxford. 1925–48 was among the volumes I bought with my first book token His poetry collections include Death of a Naturalist (1966), North (others included the works of J.M. Synge and Oscar Wilde), and (1975) and Electric Light (2001) and his work has featured in many reading that book had a definite effect. Inspired by the example of BBC programmes including the 1970s schools’ series ‘Explorations’. poems like 'Belfast' and 'Birmingham' I wrote one called He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. 'Newcastle, Co. Down' which I submitted in longhand to the Sunday Independent and which they luckily returned. Then, during a postgraduate year at St Joseph's College of Education, 'Sunday Morning' and 'Conversation' came up in a lecture by Maeve Conway, and the following year I found myself teaching 'Carrickfergus' as a prescribed poem to a group of GCE students in St Thomas's Intermediate School in Ballymurphy.

Soon after that I was able to organise my own reading of MacNeice. John Sherlock, a colleague at St Joseph's (where I was appointed in 1963), had acquired an interest in The Chimney Corner Inn, out beyond Glengormley, and was eager to initiate a programme of cultural events. One of the first of these saw Michael Longley and myself reading and introducing work by the now deceased poet. By then I had gone on a daytrip with my GCE students to explore MacNeice landmarks in Carrickfergus, and would soon join Michael and Derek Mahon for a poets' pilgrimage to Carrowdore churchyard – whence his ashes 'will not stir'.

It had been The Burning Perch, published a few days after MacNeice's untimely death in 1963, which made the big, immediate and lasting impression. From the abounding memory- source of 'Soap Suds' to the as-it-is-now-and-ever-shall-be mythic take on 'Charon', the book had swiftness and inevitability and left an indelible mark.

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Terence Brown In the late Fifties and early Sixties the Northern Ireland Senior Certificate English syllabus was partly based on a volume Terence Brown entitled The Pageant of English Verse. Born in China, Terence Brown was educated in County Down, at Magee A sturdy green hardback (I still keep my University College, Derry and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he is now school copy here in my office in Trinity Professor of Anglo-Irish literature and a Senior Fellow. A member of the College, Dublin) it offered substantial Royal Irish Academy and of Academia Europaea, he has lectured and selections by an E.W. Parker of English- published extensively on Irish literature and cultural history. His language poetry from the thirteenth to publications include Louis MacNeice: Sceptical Vision (1974) and 61 twentieth centuries. Ireland: a Social and Cultural History, 1922–79 (1981). In its later pages between W.H. Auden's 'O what is that Sound' and Stephen Spender's 'The Express' appeared a single poem by one Louis MacNeice. That poem was 'Snow'. I remember how taken I was by its blend of sensuous immediacy and mystery, its relish for 'the drunkenness of things being various' and its enigmatic final line (though I doubt I would have expressed the matter quite like that back then). Oddly enough, nobody told me that MacNeice was a local man and it was only at university that I learnt that the poet had grown up in Carrickfergus, across the Belfast Lough from where I spent my own Holywood childhood, like him hearing the sound of ships' sirens in the night and the heavy breathing of steam trains which wended their way to and from Belfast along the lough shore in Counties Antrim and Down.

As I got to know MacNeice's body of work, and when as a graduate student I began to prepare a thesis on him, I came to feel that that poem was one with special claims on the Ulster reader in a province where the pleasures of the senses were often enough under puritan suspicion and understood that its zest for a world which is 'Incorrigibly plural' was an insouciant rebuke to those who would categorize experience, and sometimes their fellow citizens, all too readily. I sensed the poem had introduced me with panache and style to the liberating possibilities of difference and for that I still feel grateful.

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62 Glenn Patterson I have found myself ever since asking the same question about all manner of things. It is addictive and, of course, every bit as In November 1998 Queen’s University’s subjective as ‘favourite’ and ‘best’. Yet when it comes to Northern then writer-in-residence, Colin Teevan Ireland and Poets We Could Not Have Done Without it is difficult decided to mark the diamond jubilee to imagine how anyone could rival MacNeice for the title. And if of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal by you doubt me, think of three of the other contenders – Heaney, organising a reading of the poem in its Longley, Mahon – gathered as young men at his grave in entirety, with this twist: each of the Carrowdore; think of two of the others – Carson and Muldoon – twenty-four cantos was to be delivered with their nods to ‘Snow’. Actually, just think of ‘Snow’: ‘World is by a different reader. He invited poets, crazier and more of it than we think/Incorrigibly plural’. prose writers, playwrights, politicians, critics, clergymen and actors to Beat that for a revelation, a manifesto, a guide for living, here or participate. I was fortunate enough to be still hanging around the anywhere else. university, doing a bit of teaching, having been writer-in-residence myself until the previous year. (Some would say I am still hanging around there, although now with the fig leaf of a contract.) I got Glenn Patterson wind of Colin’s plans at an early stage and laid claim to Canto IV, Born in Belfast, Glenn Patterson studied at the University of East the one which begins, ‘September has come and I awake . . . ’ Anglia, taking a Creative Writing MA under the tutelage of and which includes some of the greatest writing about love, Malcolm Bradbury. Returning to Northern Ireland in 1988, he took and desire, in the English language: ‘all of London littered with the post of writer-in-the-community for Lisburn/Craigavon and has remembered kisses’, and all that. since been writer-in-residence at the Universities of Cork, East Anglia and Queen's University Belfast. His first novel Burning We had, that autumn of 1998, already had the Good Friday Your Own (1988) won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize; Agreement, although not yet the first attempt at devolution. subsequent novels include The International (1999) and the recent There was still a deal of suspicion. (Proceeds from the MacNeice That Which Was (2004). Lapsed Protestant, a collection of his event went to the Omagh Memorial Trust, which tells you all you non-fiction, was published in 2006. need to know about where we were then.) Looking back, however, remembering the easy mix of people in the foyer of the Harty Room after the reading, people as they say here of all political persuasions (including that great persuasion known as None), I can’t help thinking of the event as a pointer to the future, which is to say to our present and the search for cultural, if not political, common ground.

The Belfast playwright Owen McCafferty once told me the toughest question he had ever been asked: ‘What is the one play in the last fifty years we could not have done without?’ Not ‘your favourite’, or even necessarily ‘the best’, ‘the one we could not have done without’.

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Select Biography Briggs, Asa (1921–) A renowned historian of Victorian Britain, Briggs is also widely regarded as 'the most important broadcasting Auden, W.H. (1907–1973) historian in Britain'. His five-volume The History of Widely considered one of the major twentieth century poets, Broadcasting in the United Kingdom charts the story of the Wystan Hugh Auden's extensive output covered a vast range BBC from its inception in 1922 (Birth of Broadcasting, 1961) of verse forms. His decision to leave England for America in through to the mid-Seventies and the increased threat to the 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War caused BBC from independent television (Competition, 1995). controversy. In death his reputation has flourished, some literary historians describing him as the 'first writer of the Britten, Benjamin (1913–1976) postmodern period'. 64 Prodigiously gifted, Benjamin Britten is considered one of the finest composers Bell, Sam Hanna (1909–1990) 63 of the twentieth century. His A Features Producer for the BBC’s penultimate opera Owen Wingrave Northern Ireland Home Service (1971) is amongst his most famous (subsequently BBCNI), Sam Hanna works. Manipulating the mass medium Bell, through his work with the Outside of television, this BBC broadcast was Broadcasting Unit, was pivotal in seen and heard in at least thirteen documenting rural working-class life in countries by a global audience. Ulster. He was also an acclaimed novelist, with December Bride (1951) Clark, Eleanor (1913–1996) his most famous work. American novelist and non-fiction writer. In 1939 she and MacNeice met and fell in love; however, their relationship Betjeman, John (1906–1984) would not last. Clark later married the American writer Robert Poet, critic and broadcaster. A prolific writer, by the 1950s Penn Warren. Her book The Oysters of Locmariaquer received John Betjeman was a well-known figure, publishing regularly in the National Book Award for Arts and Letters in 1965. books and magazines. He was also a popular broadcaster, making frequent radio and television appearances, often Cusack, Cyril (1910–1993) discussing one, or both, of his twin passions – architecture and 65 From his debut in Fred O'Donovan's railways. He was knighted in 1969 and in 1972 was Knocknagow (1918) to a role in appointed Poet Laureate. Danny, the Champion of the World (1991), Cyril Cusack enjoyed the Boyd, John (1912–2002) longest screen career of any British- From 1947 Boyd was the Talks Producer for the BBC’s based performer. However, it was as a Northern Ireland Home Service. The first producer of regular stage actor that he was perhaps most arts programmes on BBC Radio in Northern Ireland, his esteemed, performing to great acclaim documentaries profiled Irish writers including Louis MacNeice in over sixty productions in the Abbey and Seamus Heaney. Boyd was also a playwright, memoirist Theatre in the 1930s and 1940s. and, in retirement, advisor to the Lyric Theatre.

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Day-Lewis, Cecil (1904–1972) 67 Gilliam, Laurence (1907–1964) The poet and novelist Cecil Day-Lewis was born at A critically acclaimed radio producer, Ballintubbert, Queen's County, Ireland. Along with W.H. Laurence Duval Gilliam joined the BBC Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender he was part Drama Department in 1933. In 1936 of the Oxford poets' circle of the 1920s. With his translation he was given responsibility for of Virgil's Georgics (1940) and his own verse collections Features, a pioneering form of Word Over All (1943) and Poems, 1943–1947 (1948) he broadcasting which blended sound, achieved his full stature as a poet. Whilst poetry was his true words, and music together to create an vocation, Day-Lewis, under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake, aural picture. His work in Features also wrote detective novels. In 1951, the year in which his during the Second World War earned BBC commissioned translation of Virgil's Aeneid was him an OBE. Throughout the post-war period – the 'golden broadcast as part of the Festival of Britain, he was elected age of radio' – Gilliam did more than anyone else in the Oxford professor of poetry. In 1968, he became the first BBC to recruit and encourage poets and writers to contribute Irish-born Poet Laureate since Nahum Tate (1652–1715). work for the BBC Features Department.

Gorham, Maurice (1902–1975) Dodds, E.R. (1893–1979) 68 Born in Banbridge, County Down, Dodds was a classical An Irish journalist and broadcasting scholar. An often controversial figure, he was asked to leave executive, Maurice Gorham worked Oxford in 1916 for supporting the Easter Rising. for eight years as General Editor of However, he returned the following year to take his Greats the Radio Times before transferring in examination, obtaining a First. He subsequently taught in 1941 into broadcasting proper and Dublin and Reading before being appointed to a chair of becoming Director of the BBC's North Greek in the University of Birmingham. He appointed American Services. He went on to MacNeice as lecturer in Greek in 1930. In 1936 he became enjoy a long and distinguished career Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. A lifelong interest in the at the BBC, serving variously as paranormal culminated with Dodds becoming President of Director of the Light Programme and Television Service. the Society for Psychical Research from 1961 to 1963. He left the BBC in 1947 and later served for several years as Director of Broadcasting at Radio Éireann. Eliot, T.S. (1888–1965) 66 First published in 1915, The Love Song Larkin, Philip (1922–1985) 69 of J. Alfred Prufrock marked the start of English poet, novelist, jazz critic and Thomas Stearns Eliot's influential poetry librarian. Almost immediately after career. The Waste Land (1922) graduating from Oxford, Larkin began secured his reputation as one of the his career as a librarian. His twentieth century's major poets. In breakthrough as a poet arrived in the 1925 he became Literary Editor of 1950s during a period as Faber & Gwyer (later Faber & Faber), Sub-Librarian at Queen's University in which role he would cultivate and Belfast. In 1955 he became Librarian promote younger writers, such as MacNeice, and define the at Hull University, a position he held next forty years of British poetry. until his death. That same year saw the publication of The 68 69 13210 L.McN INNER ST22 5/9/07 9:46 am Page 70

Less Deceived, the collection that would make his name as and educationalist, first at Oxford, then Edinburgh and, in a poet. The Whitsun Weddings (1964) set the seal on 1934, Belfast, where he became President and Vice- Larkin's reputation. High Windows (1974) was the last book Chancellor of Queen's University. He left Belfast in 1938 of poems to be published in Larkin's lifetime. to succeed Sir John Reith and become the second Director General of the BBC. His reign at the BBC was described Motion, Andrew (1952–) as 'short, stormy and in some ways calamitous'. Ogilvie The English poet, novelist and broadcaster Andrew Motion read resigned in 1942 and in 1944 became principal of Jesus English at University College, Oxford. He has held a number of College, Oxford. prestigious posts including that of Editor of Poetry Review and Poetry Editor and Editorial Director at London publishers Chatto Olivier, Laurence (1907–1989) & Windus. He became Poet Laureate in 1999. Considered by many to be the finest actor of the twentieth century, Olivier made his name as a stage actor performing Muldoon, Paul (1951–) classical roles. As a screen actor he helped make Born in County Armagh and educated Shakespeare available to a mass audience and was twelve 70 at Queen's University Belfast, Paul times nominated for an Academy Award. In later years he Muldoon worked as a radio and played a pivotal role in the establishment of an English television producer for BBCNI from National Theatre. 1973 to 1986 and was responsible for landmark arts broadcasts including Robertson, Charles Grant (1869–1948) Irish Poetry and Bazaar. Since 1987 An historian and academic administrator, Robertson was he has lived in the USA where he is tutor at Exeter College (1895-99) and at Magdalen College currently the Howard G. B. Clark '21 (1905-20). In 1920 he was appointed Principal of Professor at Princeton University. His Birmingham University, later serving as its Vice-Chancellor collections of poetry include New from 1927 until his retirement in 1938. Weather (1973), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002) and Horse Rodgers, William Robert (1909–1969) Latitudes (2006). He has been the recipient of numerous The poet-broadcaster W.R. (Bertie) Rodgers was born and awards including the Pulitzer Prize (2003) and the 2006 brought up in Ballymacarrett, east Belfast. He was educated European Prize for Poetry. at Queen's University Belfast where he took a second-class honours degree in English (1927–31). He trained for the Presbyterian ministry and, in 1935, was ordained and 71 Ogilvie, F.W. (1893–1949) Oxford-educated, Frederick Wolff appointed minister of Cloveneden Church, Loughgall, County Ogilvie was reading for literae Armagh. Rodgers began writing poetry in 1938; his first humaniores when the First World War collection Awake! and other Poems was published in 1941. broke out. Within two days he was in In 1946 Rodgers resigned his ministry to join the BBC in the forces. He was seriously wounded London, having been recruited by Louis MacNeice for the and lost his left arm in 1915, but Features Department. A second collection of poetry, Europa remained in the army until the end of And The Bull, appeared in 1952. the war. In 1919 he returned to England and life as an academic 70 71 13210 L.McN INNER ST22 5/9/07 9:46 am Page 72

Spender, Stephen Encounter from 1973 to 1985. He was awarded the OBE 72 (1909–1995) in 1990 for services to poetry. Educated at University College, Vaughan-Thomas, Wynford Oxford, where he met Louis 73 MacNeice and W.H. Auden, (1908–1987) Stephen Spender left university Welsh journalist and broadcaster, without taking a degree and Wynford Vaughan-Thomas joined went to Berlin in 1930. His the BBC in the mid-1930s. breakthrough collection Poems He established his reputation as was published in 1933. He took a correspondent during World War a keen interest in politics, Two with notable reports including variously declaring himself to be those from an RAF Lancaster during a socialist and pacifist. In 1937 a night raid over Berlin and from he travelled to Spain. His experiences during the Spanish the Anzio beachhead, as well as Civil War inspired some of his finest anti-war poetry. In later the liberations of Rome and the life Spender was Professor of English at University College, Belsen concentration camp. The London (1970–77), and later Professor Emeritus. closing stages of the war found him in Hamburg, broadcasting from the Stallworthy, Jon (1935–) studio which William Joyce, Lord Poet, critic, scholar and biographer, Stallworthy is the author Haw-Haw, had been using only days before. After the war he of the definitive MacNeice biography, Louis MacNeice reported on Indian Independence (1947) and was a leading (Faber & Faber, 1995). A Fellow of the British Academy and commentator on state occasions, most notably the wedding of of the Royal Society of Literature, he is Acting President of Princess Elizabeth to the Duke of Edinburgh. Wolfson College, Oxford.

Strindberg, Johan August (1849–1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, painter and short-story writer, Strindberg's works combined psychology and naturalism. A literary innovator, his work represented a new kind of European drama and the evolution towards Expressionist drama. Along with Ibsen, he is considered one of Scandinavia's greatest writers.

Thwaite, Anthony (1930–) An acclaimed writer and poet, Anthony Thwaite worked as a Producer in the BBC Features Department in the early 1960s. His later roles including Literary Editor of The Listener, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Libya, Henfield Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, Literary Editor of the New Statesman, and co-editor of 72 73 13210 L.McN INNER ST22 5/9/07 9:46 am Page 74

Picture Credits 39 46 © Faber & Faber 40 47 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice 41 48 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council Page Picture 42 49 © BBC 2 1 © BBC 43 50 © BBC 7 2 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council 44 51 © BBC 8 3 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council 46 52 © Jude MacLaverty 94 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council 48 53 © John Minihan 10 5 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council 50 54 Image courtesy of Edna Longley 11 6 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice 51 55 © Amelia Stein 12 7 © BBC 52 56 © Adrian Tighe 12 8 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council 54 57 © Kelvin Boyes 13 9 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice 57 58 Image courtesy of Patricia Craig 13 10 © Faber & Faber 59 59 Image courtesy of Peter McDonald 14 11 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice 60 60 © BBC 15 12 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council 62 61 Image courtesy of Terence Brown 16 13 © Faber & Faber 64 62 © Michael Donald 18 14 © Faber & Faber 66 63 © BBC 19 15 © BBC 67 64 © BBC 20 16 © BBC 67 65 © BBC 21 17 © BBC 68 66 © BBC 21 18 © BBC 69 67 © BBC 22 19 © BBC 69 68 © BBC 23 20 © BBC 69 69 © BBC 23 21 © BBC 70 70 © BBC 24 22 © BBC 70 71 © BBC 24 23 © Faber & Faber 72 72 © BBC 25 24 © BBC 73 73 © BBC 26 25 © Faber & Faber 26 26 Image Courtesy of Corinna MacNeice 27 27 © BBC 27 28 © BBC Acknowledgements 28 29 © BBC 29 30 © BBC Editorial Advisory Committee: Edna Longley, Anne Tannahill, Ian Sansom 29 31 © BBC and Glenn Patterson 30 32 © Getty Images 31 33 © BBC Reseach and Production: Francis Jones 31 34 © MacNeice Collection – Carrickfergus Borough Council Executive Producer: Mark Adair 32 35 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice 32 36 © Getty Images BBCNI wishes to thank all of those who have assisted in the development of 33 37 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice © Lotte Meitner-Graf this exhibition, including: Vic Gray at Faber & Faber, Helen Rankin at 34 38 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice Carrickfergus Museum, Alice Williams at David Higham 34 39 © Studio Canal Associates, Corinna MacNeice, Trish Hayes, Ken Anderson, Hugh Odling- 35 40 © BBC Smee, Gavin Boyd, Douglas Carson, Jonathan Allison, Barnaby Perkins, 35 41 Image courtesy of Corinna MacNeice © Lotte Meitner-Graf David Huddleston and all the staff at The Ulster Folk & Transport 36 42 © BBC Museum, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, BBC Photo 37 43 © BBC Unit and BBC Written Archives at Caversham. 38 44 © Faber & Faber 39 45 © BBC Design: Genesis Advertising Ltd

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Select Bibliography

Boyd, John, The Middle Of My Journey (Blackstaff Press, 1991)

Brown, Terence, Louis MacNeice: Sceptical Vision (Gill & Macmillan, 1975)

Coulton, Barbara, Louis MacNeice in the B.B.C. (Faber & Faber, 1980)

Longley, Edna, Louis MacNeice: A Study (Faber & Faber, 1988)

Longley, Michael, ed. Selected Poems (Faber & Faber, 2005)

MacNeice, Louis, The Strings Are False (Faber & Faber, 1996)

McDonald, Peter, ed. Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 2007)

McDonald, Peter, Louis MacNeice: The Poet In His Contexts (Clarendon Press, 1991)

McMahon, Sean, Sam Hanna Bell: A Biography (Blackstaff Press, 1999)

Stallworthy, Jon, Louis MacNeice (Faber & Faber, 1995)

Wills, Clair, That Neutral Island (Faber & Faber, 2007)

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