Stories in Sound

Belfast has changed a lot over recent years. People leave and move on, businesses both create and follow public tastes and fashions and the City evolves as each generation makes its mark. The music scene is no exception. Belfast's Maritime Hotel is, quite rightly, celebrated as the labour ward for Rn'B in the early 1960s and a generation later the Harp Bar became synonymous with Punk. What happene...

BBC Ireland Correspondent Chris Page examines the state of play between Irish nationalism and unionism 100 years after the Easter Rising - the key event in Republican history.

John Bennett investigates the story of the 1945 Ballymacarrett railway disaster and learns how a series of errors and poor decisions led to the worst accident on Ireland’s railways since 1889.

Brian Kernohan travels to the Dark Hedges to ask why we make the choices we do in life. He meets Dawn Purvis at a photoshoot and talks to her about her journey from young mum, to politician and on to the public face of the Marie Stopes Clinic. He also explores different paths others have chosen to take with victims campaigner Raymond McCord, Patrick Cregg from the Woodland Trust and people who liv...

Marie-Louise Muir meets Jocelyn Bell Burnell, famous for making one of the most significant astronomical discoveries of the 20th century.

Classical guitarist Craig Ogden journeys to Northern Ireland to retrace his mother's childhood before she immigrated to Australia in 1954 as a Ten Pound Pom.

For most of his life, 26-year-old Proinsias O'Coinn, has thought that there's something wrong with him. Ever since he was a teenager he's been trying to find a song, a film, a poem or any piece of art that could make him cry. When friends would be moved to tears by a weepy film or a sad song, Proinsias would look on in envy, wishing it could have the same effect on him. You see in his head, being...

Phillip Gallagher follows traveller and evangelical preacher, John Purcell, as he spreads the gospel, tries to heal the sick and sell a few caravans along the way.

William Crawley travels to Winston Churchill's final resting place in Bladon, Oxfordshire, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death in January 1965.

Football fan Rigsy goes on the trail of Belfast footballer Jimmy Hasty, who made European Cup history with Dundalk FC and was League of Ireland top scorer.

Historian Eamon Phoenix explores the fifty-year history of Craigavon, meeting some of the key people behind the original plans.

Exploring the accents, dialects, characteristics and customs that make the world of the Culchie unique.

Declining numbers of Catholics are joining the priesthood. Elaine McGee asks if allowing priests to marry could be a solution.

Anne-Marie McAleese goes in search of pioneering astronomer and solar photographer Annie Maunder.

The untold story of Ballyhackamore GAA, east Belfast's Gaelic football club, which survived for just a few seasons in the late 1960s. With Kevin Magee.

Chris Capper tells the story of the Ulster Home Guard, including why Catholics were deeply suspicious of it and did not join up.

In the early 1990s dance music roared out of the underground and changed youth culture forever. In Belfast the biggest, loudest and most notorious raves took place at the Ulster Hall. Who was behind them, why did they come to end and what is their legacy?

Lynne sells sex in Belfast to pay off debts to those who got her into the country. Will new legislation help the girls recruited into this industry? Andy Pag reports.

Alison Finch joins thousands of hopefuls from across the world at the 2012 Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival in Co Clare.

Ten years ago, Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in the workplace. On 29 March 2004, the air cleared in Ireland's bars, restaurants and other buildings - and there was hardly any backlash. The pub-loving nation became the model for a global health revolution. In the decade since, countries across the world have passed smoke-free laws of their own. In this programme, the...

It's one of the strangest, most complex and frustrating works in Middle English, so when writer Ian Sansom is tasked with coming up with a radio adaptation of William Langland's medieval dream poem 'Piers the Plowman', it presents a bit of a challenge. His producer's solution? To lock Ian away in a Curfew Tower in the Glens of Antrim and challenge him to come up with his adaptation over the course...

Marie-Louise Muir meets Ireland's artists at the former ancestral home of theatre impresario Sir Tyrone Guthrie. Before his death in 1971, giant of world theatre and pioneer of the open stage, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, bequeathed his ancestral home at Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, to the Irish State as a residential workplace and retreat for artists. Today 'The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig...

Mark Patterson explores how surfing is shaping Ireland's coastal communities north and south of the border.