Ireland: A Writer's Island

This picture postcard overview of the geographical haunts of Ireland's literary geniuses is an enjoyable, and breathtakingly beautiful, tour of the world of Joyce, Yeats, Swift, Wilde, Synge, Shaw and Goldsmith, as well as some of the lesser Irish literary luminaries: Frank O'Connor, George Moore, Sean O'Casey, and Brendan Behan. Viewers see the inspiration for Yeats' "The Isle of Innisfree," walk the Dublin streets of Leopold Bloom's journey in Joyce's Ulysses, visit the hallowed halls of Trinity College, which saw a many of the great Irish writers in its long and varied history, and stop in at the pubs which Brendan Behan, the renowned "Borstal Boy" frequented-and often fought in. In addition to the wonderful sights, the narration is packed with trivia about the writer's lives-more actually on their lives than on their work. And so we learn of Swift's long affair with the mysterious Vanessa, Wilde's unfortunate childhood-during which he was often dressed as a young girl (a fate which also befell the young Hemingway), Behan's acute alcoholism-to the point where he moved his typewriter into a pub, and Joyce's familial and religious clashes which eventually resulted in his permanent exile from Dublin-the city which would infuse virtually all of his writing.