Episode 2
The usually taciturn Tomás can’t stop talking. His son Liam is worried.
The gripping story of a family’s struggles in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. Read by Brian Gleeson.
Inspired by Maggie O’Farrell’s own family history, this spellbinding story follows a family’s struggle for survival in the aftermath of the Great Hunger.
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 usually taciturn Tomás can’t stop talking after a strange encounter in an ancient scrap of woodland unrecorded on existing maps. His son Liam is worried.
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.
Brian Gleeson is 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
Producers: Fay Lomas and Mary Ward-Lowery
On radio
Broadcast
- Tue 16 Jun 202622:45BBC Radio 4
