Christopher Murray is Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre History in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. A former editor of Irish University Review and chair of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL), he is author of Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation (1997) and Sean O’Casey Writer at Work: A Biography (2004), which the TLS described as ‘definitive’. He has also edited Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews 1964-1999 (1999) and Beckett at 100: The Centenary Essays (2006). His Selected Plays of George Shiels was published by Colin Smythe in 2008. and an edition of critical essays Alive in Time: The Enduring Drama of Tom Murphy appeared from Carysfort Press in 2010.