Barry Devlin (born 27 November 1946) is an Irish musician, screenwriter and director.

Early life

Devlin is from Moortown in Ardboe,

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. Its county town is Omagh. Adjoined to the south-west shore of Lough Neagh, the cou ...

. He initially began to train as a Columban priest, but left to study English at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

and then joined a graphics company as a screenwriter.

Career

He was in the pioneering Irish

Celtic rock Celtic rock is a genre of folk rock, as well as a form of Celtic fusion which incorporates Celtic music, instrumentation and themes into a rock music context. It has been prolific since the early 1970s and can be seen as a key foundation of the ...

band Horslips as bass player, vocalist and front man. After the breakup of Horslips, Devlin released the 1983 solo album ''Breaking Star Codes''. Horslips reunited from 2004 - 2006, and again from 2009 - 2019. He has directed for the screen, producing a number of U2 videos in the 1980s. He has also been a writer for radio and screen, originating the radio detective drama '' Baldi'' and writing episodes for the television series '' Ballykissangel'' and '' The Darling Buds of May'' and the screenplay for the film '' A Man of No Importance'' (1994). He wrote the screenplays for the five episodes of the television series '' My Mother and Other Strangers'', which aired in 2016. He co-wrote with Paul J. Bolger ''

Hound A hound is a type of hunting dog used by hunters to track or chase prey. Description Hounds can be contrasted with gun dogs that assist hunters by identifying prey and/or recovering shot quarry. The hound breeds were the first hunting dogs. ...

'', a graphic novel trilogy based on the

Ulster Cycle The Ulster Cycle (), formerly known as the Red Branch Cycle, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the Ulaid. It is set far in the past, in what is now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster, particularly counties Armagh, Do ...

that got limited release from 2014 to 2018 before

Dark Horse A dark horse is a previously lesser-known person, team or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals, that is unlikely to succeed but has a fighting chance, unlike the underdog who is exp ...

published an

omnibus edition An omnibus edition or omnibus is a book containing multiple creative works by the same or, more rarely, different authors. Commonly two or more of the works have been previously published as books, but a collection of shorter works, or shorter w ...

. In 2015, Devlin won the Best Writer Published in Ireland award at the Irish Comic News alongside Paul for ''Hound''.

Family

His sister, Marie Devlin, is a school teacher and writer, who published ''Over Nine Waves'', a collection of traditional Irish myths and legends, in 1994. She was married to the Nobel laureate

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...

, from 1965 until the poet's death in 2013. One of his six sisters is Polly Devlin, the writer and broadcaster, who was awarded the OBE for services to literature. Her first book, ''All Of Us There'', is now a Virago Modern Classic. She made a documentary film ''The Daisy Chain'' and now is a professor at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, New York.

References

External links

*
BBC Northern Ireland Drama - ''Baldi'' series 3
{{DEFAULTSORT:Devlin, Barry 1946 births 20th-century screenwriters from Northern Ireland Alumni of University College Dublin British graphic novelists Comics writers from Northern Ireland Living people Male screenwriters from Northern Ireland Male television writers from Northern Ireland Musicians from County Tyrone People educated at St Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh People from Ardboe Radio writers from Northern Ireland