Yeats Exhibition

If you’ve not been to the Yeats Exhibition in the National Library, put it into the diary; it’s excellent.

But isn’t it time the capital offered a large scale exhibition that honoured all the literary figures of Ireland from the bards of old up to Roddy Doyle today. I mean a major, permanent exhibition bringing us on a tour through the literary history of the country.

What a pantheon: Dean Swift, Synge, Sean O’Casey, Beckett, Goldsmith, Brian Friel, Yeats, Joyce, McGahern, George Bernard Shaw, Mangan, Heaney, O’Cadhain, Bram Stoker, Kavanagh, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Maeve Binchy, Wilde, Flann O’Brien, Ó Direáin, Brendan Behan etc. If you also include writers who had significant links with Ireland, or, for example, those whose ancestors were Irish the list becomes nothing short of incredible.

With a cast like that it could change from month to month, changing emphasis, theme whatever. It could incorporate films, filmed dramas in various languages, weird and wonderful adaptions of plays etc. The possibilities are myriad; it could hardly fail to be a success.