Easy on a Sunday morning with tales that beguile and inspire

A new collection of contributions to RTÉ Radio One's much-loved 'Sunday Miscellany' gives listeners a chance to catch up on the stories they missed, writes Catherine Foley

IT'S APPROPRIATE that Sunday Miscellanyis broadcast on Sunday morning, the day of rest, as it has that same relaxed, quiet quality to it. It's an iconic RTÉ programme peopled by writers who share their private thoughts and family histories, not to mention their neuroses and fears, with the listener.

The pieces are usually delivered with solemnity as if from a pulpit in a church, and all the pieces of writing are meditations on various aspects of life, both the interior and the exterior life. In some ways, they are like hymns, singing to us about love, lost and found.

On the radio, the writers beguile, not just with their words, but with their own voices, but listeners who sometimes miss the programme will welcome a newly-published selection of contributions. Among the 106 writers are Seamus Heaney, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Colm Tóibín, Joseph O'Connor and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.

The editor, producer Clíodha Ní Anluain, has included a total of 148 pieces in the book, choosing from a total of 700 individual recordings, which were broadcast over the two-year period from the middle of 2006 to around June earlier this year. All sorts of subjects are covered, ranging from Conor O'Callaghan's account of the time he decided to grow a beard to Sharon Hogan's heart-stopping description of her growing relationship with her unborn child, to Colm Ó Snodaigh's story, An Ghaoth Aneas, about the loneliness he felt at the death of a friend he'd grown up with.

Each story packs a punch of some sort, with funny stories too, such as Catherine Brophy's thoughts on the Irish Casanova, and Chuck Kruger's story about the day he got up on the table and stood on his head to explain perspective to his class.

It's fascinating to read Seamus Heaney's description of the first day he sat down to his desk as a full-time poet, having given up his job in Queen's University and come to Wicklow with his family. Colm Tóibín's piece is about his first seaweed bath in Ballybunion. Joseph O'Connor recalls the thrill he got when he was in London years ago trying to establish himself as a writer and he got a call out of the blue from the great John B Keane. Anne Enright writes about flying around the world and losing her sense of time.

The contributors include those writers whose voices are so quickly identifiable when they come on air, such as Leo Cullen, Cyril Kelly, Enda Wyley, Gerald Dawe and John F Deane.

This is the sixth Sunday Miscellanycollection, the second to be edited by Ní Anluain, who has opened the gates to many new voices, including this writer who has been a contributor to the programme in the past.

In Denis Sampson's entry, he tells of his first meeting with John McGahern 30 years ago. He describes finding images of his own humanity and nature in McGahern's work. It was in the novels and stories that Sampson discovered his "own sublime home". The same could be said about these pieces of writing. As we read, we hear our inner thoughts being described or distilled into a purer form and we can only smile in agreement and sympathy with the writer.

• Sunday Miscellany, a selection from 2006-2008, is edited by Clíodhna Ní Anluain and published by New Island