The Vicar of Bray's Daughter

Life Changing

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.6 • 735 Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her early twenties Carol Cairns, the daughter of a priest in Ireland, had a passionate affair with a young bohemian poet called Benedict Ryan. In the Dublin of the 1960s, their improbable partnership burned bright but briefly. Somehow the gap in their backgrounds was too great. Not long after, life took her in a completely different direction. Shortly after her 70th birthday, while thinking of names for a grandson to be, she remembered Benedict. Where was he now? After a failed marriage, she used Skype to see if the flame still burned.

Carol tells Dr Sian Williams about the emotional moment they reunited, after almost half a century.

Producer; Tom Alban

Transcript

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0:00.0	What is love?
0:03.0	Is it chemistry, fate or a disaster waiting to happen?
0:07.0	Sometimes you mistake other things for love.
0:10.0	Join me, Ryland, on my new podcast as I ask experts and a few familiar faces what love really means.
0:16.3	Because it turns out it's a bit more complicated than happily ever after.
0:20.7	You should think of it as the daily commitment you make to someone that you care about.
0:25.2	Ryland, how to be in love. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.1	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:35.0	You're about to listen to the latest series of Life-changing.
0:39.0	Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
0:42.8	But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes first on BBC Sounds.
0:50.4	Hello, we've a bit of a change today.
0:53.3	Instead of a snug studio in Broadcasting House in London,
0:56.8	I'm out on the road on the west coast of Ireland to visit a woman who wrote to us about a
1:02.0	transformative moment that happened late in her life, but which was prompted by a memory that she
1:08.4	just couldn't shake from her days as a student. Her name is Carol
1:13.0	Kairns and she lives just outside Westport. It's quite a remote part too so I'm waiting for her
1:19.6	to give me a lift there. Hello Carol. Hello I'd be lovely to meet you. It's so good to meet you.
1:28.3	How are you?
1:28.8	It's exciting.
1:30.0	You have a safe journey.
1:31.2	Safe journey, yes.
	...

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