Will Gregory on Flann O'Brien

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2017

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Goldfrapp's Will Gregory is centre-stage at the Colston Hall in Bristol to tell Matthew Parris why he feels a kinship with Flann O'Brien.

The Irish writer's books 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'The Third Policeman' are now hailed as literary masterpieces, but only came to prominence after the author's death.

Carol Taaffe, who has written about Flann, helps make sense of the man who wrote under three pseudonyms - Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien, and Myles na gCopaleen. They look more closely at the novels and newspaper column he wrote alongside his job in the Civil Service, whilst maintaining a steady presence in Dublin's pubs.

Will reads extracts he believes illustrate the brilliance with which O'Brien slips between realism and surrealism, and Carol sheds light on who said that 'At Swim-Two-Birds' "....was just the book to give your Sister if she's a loud dirty boozy girl."

Producer: Toby Field

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2017.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
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0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC sales.
0:31.3	This is the BBC.
0:35.0	A man sits hunched over his desk in a house in Dublin.
0:40.0	He's scribbling away furiously. He just lost his job, and this newspaper column
0:46.5	that he has written for many years had been his only means of income. Strapped for cash,
0:52.4	he can't afford to heat his home and he wears an overcoat for warmth.
0:56.8	His second novel, although written almost 20 years previously, won't be published for another
1:02.4	14 years and he'll be dead by then.
1:06.4	The man I'm describing is Flano Bryan, born Brian O'Nolan, the 20th century Irish writer who penned most notably the novels
1:15.2	At Swim Two Birds and The Third Policeman, but as I've just described also read a
1:21.2	newspaper column in the Irish Times under the name Miles Nagopoline.
1:26.4	Choosing Flan is the musician Will Gregory.
1:29.2	Will is the composer of operas for theatre and for orchestra and he tours with the Will Gregory Moog Ensembler.
	...

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