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IRELAND’S literary luminaries are honoured at many festivals and a new one is being added to the list. In the centenary year of his birth, the Sam Hanna Bell inaugural literary festival will be held next weekend. An Ulster-Scots author, Bell was a significant figure in the cultural life of Belfast and a broadcasting pioneer with the BBC. Born in Scotland in 1909, his family returned to Strangford Lough in Co Down after the death of his father in 1918.

During the autumn, an exhibition organised by the BBC NI Community Archive and named after one of his novels, A Man Flourishing, has been running in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library, showcasing his typescripts and different editions of his books along with his favourite hat and pipe rack. His ancient Olympia typewriter complete with carrying case sits in a glass cabinet alongside a BBC ribbon.