Born in Wales, Barry Flanagan studied at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts and then St Martin's School of Art, London. He lived and worked in Dublin and London. Flanagan was best known for his leaping and dancing bronze hares which were displayed worldwide. Flanagan represented Britain at the 1982 Venice Biennale. In 1991 he was elected to the Royal Academy and received an OBE. In 2006, in association with Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, IMMA held a major retrospective of his work, which included ten large-scale bronzes installed along O'Connell Street and in Parnell Square. View Artist

Born near Castledawson, Co. Derry, Seamus Heaney studied at Queen's University, Belfast. His major poetry collections include Death of a Naturalist (1966), and The Haw Lantern (1987), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award. His collection The Spirit Level (1996) and translation of Beowulf (1999) both won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Heaney also published several works of prose and criticism, translated two plays by Sophocles, and co-edited two selections of poetry with Ted Hughes, The Rattle Bag (1982) and The School Bag (1997). He taught English and poetry at Queen's University and at Harvard University, and was professor of poetry at Oxford University from 1989 to 1994. Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, was made a Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 1996, and elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1997. View Artist