Talking About Yeats

I was pleased to get this book in the post yesterday, but when I opened it I was even more pleased to find that I got a lot more than I bargained for. The book is called W.B. Yeats And His World and is signed by the author Michael Mac Liammoir.  I stumbled across it on eBay a few days ago when I was looking for something else. It was in the auction which only had a few hours to go and nobody had bid on it. I put a bid in and won it for £2.90. I was chuffed because it is a first edition from 1971 and in very good condition. The seller sent me a nice message to say that there were some extras included. I’ll just tell you quickly about Michael Mac Liammoir because although the name rang a bell I couldn’t think who was, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It turns out that he was one of the leading Irish actors of his day. He was born in England in 1900 and was a child actor and appeared in Peter Pan and productions with Noel Coward. 

Fascinated by Irish culture he changed his name to the Gaelic version of his English name. He moved to Ireland where he was also a painter, writer, dramatist, poet and impresario.  With his partner Hilton Edwards he founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928. He worked in films with the likes of Orson Welles and John Huston. He won a top award for his one man show called The Importance Of Being Oscar which was also screened by the BBC. He died in 1978.

What I found inside the book which was really interesting to me was a programme of his one man show Talking About Yeats at The Duke Of York’s Theatre in London in 1971 which was also signed. There were even two tickets for the show on October 21, 1971. Also, newspaper cuttings from the Irish Times about Michael Mac Liammoir with little notes written in the margins. I’m sure whoever the original owner of the book was, they must have been a close friend or huge fan of the great man.

I’m enjoying reading this book on a dark and gloomy rainy February afternoon because the author himself knew Yeats and was part of the literary movement of which Yeats was a central figure. Also finding all the personal memorabilia inside makes me feel in a small way that I know the author myself.