Episode 3

Father Joseph pays a visit to Tomás, who has resolved to map the deserted villages of the Great Hunger.

Inspired by Maggie O’Farrell’s own family history, this spellbinding story follows a family’s struggle for survival in the aftermath of the Famine.

On a windswept peninsula in the west of Ireland in 1865, Tomás and his son Liam are working for the Ordnance Survey to map the whole country. The landscape is scarred by deserted villages, entire populations lost to famine.

The bestselling author of Hamnet returns with her tenth novel, a soaring history set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger.

Read by Brian Gleeson, best known for his roles in Bad Sisters, Love/Hate, Peaky Blinders and Under Salt Marsh.

Music: Veil of Mist by Caroline Dale
Reader: Brian Gleeson.
Abridger: Sara Davies
Production Co-ordinator: Alison Crawford
Mixed by Catilin Gazeley
Producers: Fay Lomas and Mary Ward-Lowery