This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
“What is it about the Irish?” asks Sandi Toksvig, sounding slightly exasperated. She’s being nice, though: the broadcaster and author is wondering aloud how this tiny island has produced so many world-class writers – and she’s wandering around it in a tome-filled two-part travelogue to find out. So can she be persuaded to tell us which are her favourite spots for literature lovers? Fortunately, she’s an open book…
Marsh’s Library, Dublin
Books to die for
“So much literature has come out of Dublin: Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Roddy Doyle… But one truly extraordinary place is Marsh’s (marshlibrary.ie), which was founded in 1707 – 150 years before London got its first public library. It’s one of the most astonishing collections of books I’ve ever seen in my life, and it has that wonderful musty smell, but you can still wander in there and look at the books, some of which date back to the 1600s. They showed me one that was actually shot through, in the 1916 Easter Rising, and you can see the bullet holes all the way through the pages. I wanted to shoot the Harry Potter book I read once, but that’s a bit different.
“It’s just round the corner from St Patrick’s Cathedral, where Swift was the dean, so he’d pop in when he’d finished deaning. The cathedral is breathtaking (stpatrickscathedral.ie), and gives you a whole new view of Swift’s work. We tend to think of Gulliver’s Travels as a children’s book, but he was actually an incredible satirist – today, he’d make a fortune on the stand-up circuit.”
County Sligo, North-west Ireland
Asking random folk to read
“For the poet WB Yeats, his great muse wasn’t a person, it was a place: County Sligo. Look at his beautiful, famous poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree – and as you walk around that landscape, you can feel the folk stories and legends; you start to believe in pixies and fairies. Even if you’re not a particularly big fan of poetry, hearing that wonderful work read out loud, in the place where it was created, will touch your heart.
“You could probably just thrust a book into a farmer’s hand and ask them to read it to you, the Irish are so bloody friendly! I had a chat with [Limerick-born author] Marian Keyes for the programme and now we don’t stop texting each other. We’ve become friends – and even her texts sound as if they’ve got an accent somehow.”
Maria Edgeworth Centre, Edgeworthstown
Making Jane Austen jealous
“I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of Maria Edgeworth [until making this show], but she was the writer Jane Austen aspired to be. I think Maria’s problem is that she didn’t go into the movie business. I find Austen rather tiresome now, but Edgeworth was a phenomenal writer, and you can visit her lovely house in County Longford and learn about her from the enthusiastic people who run it (mariaedgeworthcenter.com).
“One of the things I love about it is seeing her handwriting, which I think tells you she was a very precise person, and that you wouldn’t fight with her! She must have had a lot of confidence in herself because she was so successful: while Austen was self-publishing Northanger Abbey, Edgeworth was receiving several thousand pounds for her novels.”
Seamus Heaney’s HomePlace, Bellaghy
Getting upset (in a good way)
“By all means go and see the arts and literary centre at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace (seamusheaneyhome.com) – but make sure you also then go and walk in the surrounding landscape. It’s in County Londonderry, or County Derry, depending on your views, and it’s boggy and beautiful and breathtaking. Heaney was so invested in the landscape: you can feel the everyday business of his father and grandfather digging turf in the bogs right there in his poetry; and in some parts of Ireland you can still walk around and smell peat smoke coming out of the chimneys – in June! – where they’re burning the turves for fuel.
“It reminded me of my own father, in fact. I actually found bits of this trip rather upsetting because poetry has that ability to reach in and touch your heart, in a way that other literature maybe doesn’t, because you don’t expect something that only fills half a page to hit you with such clarity. And my father [Claus] was a wonderful writer – the most famous man in Denmark – and his writing was full to the brim with Danish landscape.
“You can feel that in the Irish writers too, that their work could only have sprung from Ireland. And to fully understand that, you need to go there, be there, and just… stop. Don’t rush; take a minute. Breathe the air.”
Sandi’s Ireland: a Literary Journey begins on Thursday 3 September at 9pm on More4.
The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.
Check out more of our Books coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.