If you've seen the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Toby Jones, then you’ll know the work of London-Irish writer Bridget O’Connor.
She co-wrote the screenplay with husband Peter Straughan, for which they received an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA award in 2012. Sadly, the accolades were posthumous for O’Connor, who had died two years earlier of cancer.
She started out as a short story writer. In the 1990s and the noughties, O’Connor wrote two acclaimed collections, as well as plays for radio and the stage.
Her fiction is full of fast-talking, conscience-free characters, out for what they can get from others. Now a new selection of those stories have been published in the book After a Dance.
Paula Shields has been reading it for RTÉ Arena, and she joined Sean Rocks in studio - listen above.
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