After a Dance

Bridget O’Connor was born in London in 1961, and began her career as a writer whilst working in a building-site canteen. In her spare moments she penned darkly comic and excruciatingly well observed short stories, one of which, Harp, won the 1991 Time Out short story prize. Two collections followed, Here Comes John (1993) and Tell Her You Love Her (1997). In 2001 her stage play The Flags was performed at the Manchester Royal Exchange before being produced in Liverpool, Dublin, Belfast, Slovenia, and Australia. Like so much of her writing, it was praised as much for being “sharp and gritty” as for its “sublimely drawn” characters and situations (The Guardian). As a screenwriter, Bridget often worked with her husband, Peter Straughan, and their final screenplay together was the Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. She once called herself a happy pessimist, and shining humour into dark corners was a speciality in her work and elsewhere. Bridget died in 2010, and was survived by Peter and their daughter Constance.

To call [these stories] characterful is to undersell these Technicolor prose screams, these screeching narrative sprints, this filthy feast of stories. Think Irvine Welsh meets Edna O’Brien . . . pure, delicious naughty fun.