Episode 2

Available for 29 days

Inspired by Maggie O’Farrell’s own family history, this spellbinding story follows a family’s struggle for survival in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. On a windswept peninsula in the west of Ireland in 1865, Tomás and his son Liam are working for the Ordnance Survey to map the whole country. The landscape is scarred by deserted villages, entire populations lost to famine. The usually taciturn Tomás can’t stop talking after a strange encounter in an ancient scrap of woodland unrecorded on existing maps. His son Liam is worried. The bestselling author of Hamnet returns with her tenth novel, a soaring history set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger. Brian Gleeson is best known for his roles in Bad Sisters, Love/Hate, Peaky Blinders and Under Salt Marsh. Music: Veil of Mist by Caroline Dale Reader: Brian Gleeson Abridger: Sara Davies Production Co-ordinator: Alison Crawford Producers: Fay Lomas and Mary Ward-Lowery