Arts Lives

Latest Episodes

• Stealing Beauty

  Report on the series of art thefts from Russborough House in Co Wicklow. The estate, home to the Beit Collection, has endured four high-profile robberies in the past 30 years, with thieves making off with paintings by Rubens and Van Ruysdale, while Gainsborough's Madame Baccelli has been stolen three times. The remarkable story of the exhibition connects the FBI, the IRA, Interpol and notorious Dublin gangster Martin Cahill

• John McGahern: A Memoir

  Profile of Dublin author John McGahern, who died in March 2006. Known as a master of the short story, his novels included The Barracks and Amongst Women. He also received acclaim as a writer for stage, television and radio

• Under a Coloured Cap

  Profile of acclaimed playwright Sean O'Casey, examining the influence his upbringing and political beliefs had on his writing. O'Casey was involved in the 1913 strike, and indirectly connected to the Easter Rising, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War, while his trilogy of plays Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars, presented a realistic vision of the Dublin slums he grew up in. The film, directed and narrated by O'Casey's daughter Shivaun, contains contributions from those closest to him and readings from his letters and autobiography