Gerry Smyth is a Reader in Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the author of numerous books on Irish culture, including The Novel and the Nation (1997), Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination (2001), and Music in Irish Cultural History (2009). He is currently preparing his adaptation of The Brother for performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and completing a monograph entitledTreason and Betrayal in the Modern Irish Novel.