Showing results by narrator "TP McKenna" in All Categories

All eight series of the comedy drama series set in a Donegal town in the 1950s and '60s. Ireland in the '50s, and the days of mass tourism and indoor plumbing have not yet come to rural Co. Donegal. But in the small, sleepy town of Ballylenon, change is coming, and trouble is brewing. A power struggle is under way for control of the town, with two rival forces aligned against each other.

Scientist Ralph Exon, working for an international fertiliser corporation, has created a new strain of soya bean: a mutation which he hopes will help eliminate Third World famine. But in that plant, known as the Exon strain, there lurks the Destruction Factor. As it rapidly grows - shooting up from six inches to two feet in mere hours - the plant produces oxygen at massively increased levels, sparking uncontrollable fires.

The short stories of Irish writers appeal to audiences far beyond the shores of Eire. These stories, in turn atmospheric, spookily funny, full of intriguing characters, picturesque, and touching, are steeped in the Irish delight in story-telling and cover an intriguing century of Irish city and country life.

The Irish are arguably the most literate people in the world. The number of famous Irish authors, from Joyce to Trevor and from Goldsmith to O'Brien, is a clear testimony to that. In this rich selection, we have concentrated on some of the early Irish writers who were particularly adept at the difficult art of writing good short stories.