Born in Cheshire, Barrie Cooke studied Art History at Harvard University and moved to Ireland in 1954. He held his first solo exhibition in Dublin the following year. Cooke has exhibited widely throughout Europe, the US and Canada. Major retrospectives of his work were held at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin in 1986 and at the RHA in 1995. Cooke exhibited at IMMA in 2008. His work is represented in public and private collections worldwide.

Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney studied at Queen's University, Belfast. His major poetry collections include Death of a Naturalist (1966), The Haw Lantern (1987) and The Spirit Level (1996). He also published works of prose, criticism and translation. Heaney received many literary prizes including the Whitbread Poetry Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. He taught at Queen's University, Harvard University, Oxford University.