Thomas F. Kilroy (born 23 September 1934), the Irish playwright and novelist, was born in Green Street, Callan, County Kilkenny and studied at University College, Dublin. In his early career he was play editor at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. In the 1980s, he sat on the board of Field Day Theatre Company, founded by Brian Friel and Stephen Rea in 1980, and was Director of its touring company. He became Professor of English in University College, Galway, a post from which he resigned in 1989 to concentrate on writing. He now lives in County Mayo and is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and Aosdána.

'What call had you coming here thinking to change us? We have our ways, our laws, and our language, the same as the English have, and we're proud of them . . .'

The O'Neill, Thomas Kilroy's first stage play, was written in 1966. It dramatizes the fate of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone (c.1540-1616), whose defeat by the English at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 led to the final dissolution of the ancient Irish order of government and the Plantation of Ulster.

Kilroy fixes his gaze on the relationship between colonist and native as he considers some of the most traumatic events in Irish history with reverberations into the present day.

'History will not be able to tell the difference between us.'