Brian Friel

Beginnings

Kelly Matthews

“Brian Friel is one of the great playwrights of the last 50 years but his genius did not come fully formed. Kelly Matthews wonderfully illuminates the early history of the development of Friel’s literary and theatrical imagination and his efforts to make his mark as a writer through his interactions with the BBC, the Irish Times, the New Yorker, the professional theatre. Superbly researched and engagingly written, this is an essential work for anyone interested in the theatre, in the Ireland of the 1950s and early 1960s and in the difficult struggles that are so often the long prelude to fame.” Fintan O’Toole