BRIAN’S LIFE: PLACE BY PLACE
BRIAN FRIEL: What I do is, I get an idea for a story. It could begin anywhere or with anything. It begins with the smallest possible idea which I write down in a notebook which I carry with me.¹
MOLLY SWEENEY: Anyhow my borderline country is where I live now. I’m at home there… Real-imagined-fact-fiction-fantasy-reality there it seems to be.
EXTRACT: If by some miracle mother were to say, ‘Go off with M. L’Estrange, son. Travel the world with him’, or if M. L’Estrange were to come back and say in his persuasive voice, ‘Your son and I have planned to make a grand tour of Ireland and England and the whole of Europe,’ then I would have floated off with him, and together we would have drifted happily from theatre to theatre, from country to country.²
BRIAN FRIEL: I was born in Omagh in County Tyrone in 1929.³
Born 10 January 1929 in The Bungalow, Mountjoy East, Omagh. Father: Patrick Friel – Teacher. Mother: Christina Mary Friel (formerly MacLoone).
Knockmoyle is Brian Friel’s birthplace
Lived in Tamlaght Road, Omagh
Attended Culmore Primary School, Tamlaght Road, Omagh
BRIAN FRIEL: Because of my own close associations with Glenties – it occupies a large portion of my affections and permanently shaped my imagination.5
BRIAN FRIEL: I had grandparents who were native Irish speakers and also two of the four grandparents were illiterate. It’s very close, you know, I actually remember two of them.6
BRIAN FRIEL: I have the warmest and most vivid memories of railbus journeys on that line that ended at the old station at Glenties, directly opposite my grandfather’s house. (The house was called Railway View)… the company would provide each year a cart-load of coke or cinders for the resurfacing of the new path that had to be made to link our house to the main road. That condition, too, was honoured, but reluctantly and only after my Aunt Kate wrote her annual schoolmistressy letter to the company manager, Mr Curran, sternly reminding him of his obligations. Then a load of coke or cinders would be delivered and spread. And once again, until the wretched stuff was trampled into the ground, walking was a penance and cycling a real hazard.7
An Mhuc Dhubh newsletter 1993; family postcard; Fintown Railway; census return 1901 showing McLoone family
Holidays in The Laurels/Railway View
Glenties film footage 1962
BRIAN FRIEL: I think I can recall when I first knew that I loved Derry; but again, as I say, this is the unreliable casting-back of an adult. We were coming home from holidays on the old G.N.R. line which follows the river north from Strabane; it was a rich August evening; we had just turned the last bend that concealed the town; and there, suddenly, it was: the docks and the bridge and the black plane of the river and the trees and the sleeping ships. And I can recall the flood of happy recognition and joy and love and peace that suffused me.8
BRIAN FRIEL: In 1939, when I was ten, we moved to Derry where I have lived since until three or four years ago. I was at St Columb’s College for five years, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, for two and a half years, and St Joseph’s Training College for one year. From 1950 until 1960 I taught in various schools around Derry. Since then I have been writing full time.9
Lived at 5 St. Joseph’s Avenue, Derry
Postcard from
Tyrone Guthrie,
1964
Lived at 13 Malborough Street Derry
Brian Friel handwritten
notes, 1964
Ballymanus, Kincasslagh, Co. Donegal.
BRIAN FRIEL: From where I now sit, in the attic, I can see out across the bay, to where the ship was sunk in 1917. I know there is a story there. August 2 196410
Brian Friel passport photograph 1960s/1970s and letter from Brian Friel to Hilton Edwards, Theatre director, 1968
Ardmore, Muff, Co. Donegal
BRIAN FRIEL: I try to do about three hours work at my desk every day, messing around with new ideas or working on a specific play or answering letters. I’ve got to take the kids to school and back. Then we have friends in at night or we go out.11
Drumaweir House, Greencastle, Co. Donegal
House and family in Greencastle
Field Day Theatre Company, 1980s
Sets up Field Day Theatre Company, Derry 1980, with Stephen Rea
BRIAN FRIEL: Both of us felt there was some tiny little space we might fill that we could focus the whole North thing on.12
BRIAN FRIEL: The Derry base is important because in some way Derry is an important psychic town on this island.13
BRIAN FRIEL: In some kind of a way I think Field Day has grown out of that sense of impermanence, of people who feel themselves native to a province or certainly to an island but in some ways feel that a disinheritance is offered to them.14
An Grianán Theatre opens 1999
BRIAN FRIEL: When a preacher comes to town first he builds his congregation, then he builds his church.15
Letter to Patricia McBride from Brian Friel, 2001
Patricia McBride, An Grianán Theatre director, in conversation
The Brian Friel Theatre, Queens University Belfast opens 2009
BRIAN FRIEL: A new theatre can be the most exciting building in any city. It can be the home of miracles and epiphanies and revelations and renovations.16
Brian Friel’s Summer School in Donegal, Queen’s University
✭ ¹In interview with Peter Lennon (1964), in Christopher Murray (ed.) Brian Friel essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999 (1999) Faber and Faber: London, p11
✭ ²The Illusionists (1966) in The Gold in the Sea, Stories by Brian Friel. London: Victor Gollancz 1966, p30-44
✭ 3,4&9Self Portrait (1972), in Christopher Murray (ed.) Brian Friel essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999 (1999) Faber and Faber: London, p37
✭ 5 Brian Friel, 1981 quoted in MacGill Summer School programme 2016
✭ 6In Interview with Fintan O’Toole (1982) in Christopher Murray (ed.) Brian Friel essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999 (1999) Faber and Faber: London, p108.
✭ 7An Mhuc Dhubh 1993 Forward, Railway View p1-2. With kind permission of Joseph Brennan
✭ 8The Green Years: A Talk by Brian Friel 1964 in Brian Friel in Conversation Ed. (Paul Delaney) 2000 The University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, p.18
✭ 11Kathleen Mavourneen, Here Comes Brian Friel Desmond Rushe (1970) in Paul Delaney (ed.) Brian Friel in Conversation 2000, University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor p86
✭ 12In Interview with Elgy Gillespie (1981), in Christopher Murray (ed.) Brian Friel essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999 (1999) Faber and Faber: London, p98
✭ 13In Interview with Ray Comiskey (1982), in Christopher Murray (ed.) Brian Friel essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999 (1999) Faber and Faber: London, p101
✭ 14In Interview with Fintan O’Toole (1982) in Christopher Murray (ed.) Brian Friel essays, diaries, interviews: 1964-1999 (1999) Faber and Faber: London, p106
✭ 15Brian Friel quoted in 1987 in An Grianan at 20 – Birth of a Theatre 2019
✭16 Brian Friel, 30 April 2011 opening speech of Lyric Theatre Belfast in Translations programme Lyric theatre
✭ Birth Certificate, photograph by H Purkis
✭ Kenneth Allen / Brian Friel’s Residence, Omagh / CC BY-SA 2.0
✭ Kenneth Allen / Culmore old Primary School / CC BY-SA 2.0
✭ Census return of MacLoone Family, Railway View
✭ Postcard to Friel’s grandfather
✭ Architectural Drawings of The Laurels by Duncan McLaren. Dedalus Architecture
✭ Photograph of Railcar 18, Fintown Railway. Photo courtesy of Joseph Brennan
✭ 5 St. Joseph’s Avenue, Derry, photo by H Purkis
✭ Marlborough Road, Derry, photo by H.Purkis
✭ An Grianan Theatre photographs, by kind permission on An Grianan Theatre
✭ Photo of Field Day Theatre Company in Translations programme, from Riverside Theatre, Coleraine
✭ Brian Friel Theatre, Queens University, Photos by kind permission and thanks to David Grant
✭ Brian Friel Statue, Dublin, by Shaun Hannigan
✭ Funeral image by Frank Mc Grath, Indendent 4 October 2015
✭ Courtesy of National Library of Ireland
✭ 10MS 37,048/2 August 2 1964 Handwritten note; Postcard from Tyrone Guthrie
✭ XII Photographs – Brian Friel Papers
✭ MS 37,475 Note to Friel from unidentified individual at RTE, enclosing three colour photographs: 2 of Friel at his dining room table and one of the exterior of Drumaweir House, Co. Donegal (3 items, 10 x 15cm each). ‘A little memento of a lovely day. With love from all of us’. n.d. (1980s). 4 items.
✭ MS 37,462 Colour photograph of Brian and Anne Friel with their daughters Mary and Judy and three grandchildren. n.d. (1980s). 1 item, c13 x 13cm.
✭ MS 37, 469 passport photos
✭ AUDIO RECORDING Harriet Purkis talking to Patricia McBride DIRECTOR December 2022
✭ Brian Friel Theatre, Queens University, Summer School Video by kind permission and thanks to David Grant
✭ Glenties, Co. Donegal, 1962. Tidy Towns Award original film footage.
An Action of the County Donegal Heritage Plan
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