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Novelist and playwright DERMOT BOLGERfinds Listowel Writers’ Week undiminished after 39 years, and says the secret of its success is keeping its focus divided between the parochial and the universal

WHEN THE fractiously divided revolutionary factions in The Life of Brianpondered the question, “what did the Romans ever do for us”, their litany of actual benefits from the Romans was fairly extensive, from roads to sanitation, but one legacy of the Romans was overlooked. Without the Romans, 200 people would not have been sitting in the Listowel Arms Hotel last Saturday listening to Terry Jones (key conspirator in Monty Python and director of The Life of Brian) present his persuasive and witty perspective on Roman and Barbarian history and the bloody fault lines along which they met.