Culture That Made Me: Nationwide's Anne Cassin on Simon Reeve, Schindler's List, and Brideshead Revisited

The RTÉ presenter is also a big fan of Enid Blyton and Enda Walsh 

Anne Cassin presents Nationwide on RTÉ One. 

Anne Cassin grew up in Balbriggan, County Dublin. She’s the eldest daughter of the late actor and director Barry Cassin. 

She started her broadcasting career working on Radio Nova. 

Anne joined RTÉ in 1988, working across radio and television, as a TV newscaster and presenter of programmes such as Crimecall and Capital D. 

In 2012, she joined  Nationwide, the RTÉ television show she still co-presents.

Blue Peter

Blue Peter was a go-to programme growing up. It was aimed at children. It was on two days a week, a sort of magazine programme, a stalwart of the BBC schedule. It’s still around. 

It was a mix of high jinks. They had two dogs. One was called Petra. There were three presenters — Peter Purves, Johnny Noakes, Valerie Singleton. 

There was a bit of make-and-do, a bit of reporters going out into the fields. I was totally addicted.

Simon Reeve

I admire Simon Reeve, an English presenter who does travel programmes. 

He goes to remote places in, say, Antarctica or Southern America, and he looks at the effects of climate change, talking to displaced people. 

Or he went to Los Angeles and he spoke to people living under roadways. 

Simon Reeve.

He gets under the skin of things. He’s got lots of personality without it being about him. 

He’s well informed and curious. He’s a slightly carefree attitude, but he’s a great way of interacting with people and getting to the heart of the matter very fast.

Lucy Kennedy

I really like Lucy Kennedy. She’s absolutely fab. 

Living with Lucy is brilliant. She can be very cheeky and probing, but always seems to stay on the right side of not annoying people with her slightly cheeky questions.

Brendan O’Connor

For journalism, Brendan O’Connor is superb. He’s very knowledgeable. 

He’s great composure and great range. He gets great interviews from people. 

He’s thoughtful and doesn’t shy away from asking slightly awkward questions. He has judgment.

Schindler’s List

A film I go back to is Schindler’s List. I’ve always been drawn to the Second World War. 

I find the Holocaust story horrifying. Schindler’s List was made by Steven Spielberg. 

You can feel his personal investment in the story, helped by ultimately being an uplifting story, albeit in the middle of a shocking period of our history. 

Schindler's List.

I loved Ben Kingsley’s performance, and obviously Liam Neeson’s, but the film’s real star is the soundtrack by John Williams. 

It’s very moving. I loved the aesthetic of it. Because the cinematography is in black and white it adds a mystery to it.

An Cailín Ciúin

An Cailín Ciúin is a piece of cinematic perfection. It’s so moving. It’s a film about hope and kindness, based on a story by Claire Keegan called Foster. 

It’s about a young girl who’s a bit neglected in her family, with a harassed mother and a cruel father. She’s farmed out to relatives, a married couple who have their own sadness in their lives because they lost their son. 

It’s how she’s nurtured and finds with this bereaved couple the love she does not get in her own family. It’s also set in the 80s. 

I recognise that Ireland — like the blue-and-white milk jug on the kitchen table. We had one of those. It’s a beautiful film.

Enid Blyton

I thank Enid Blyton for making me a reader. I know she’s been slightly cancelled now because of her subject matter. 

There’s a whole academic study as to why she’s out of favour. I read every single one of her Famous Five books. There were 21 books. I read them over time. 

You’d get pocket money, save it up, go to the bookshop, in Drogheda in my case, and buy another one. 

I had them all on my shelf lined up, in order. Five Get into Trouble, Five on Kirrin Island Again, and so on. I’ve read those stories, probably four or five times.

Across the Barricades

A book that’s stayed with me, which I read as a teenager, is Joan Lingard’s novel Across the Barricades. 

She was a writer from Belfast. She wrote about the Troubles head on. Across the Barricades was about a love story between a young Catholic and a young Protestant. 

She wrote a series of books based on these two characters. That novel introduced me to politics in a way, even though it wasn’t a political novel.

Brideshead Revisited

I have read Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh a couple of times. I don’t know why. 

I’m not particularly interested in the English aristocracy, in the decline of the rich and landed. 

It’s just the story, the characters, and the beauty of the writing. It’s about the sense of melancholy that he writes so well about. 

He captures the inner life. He writes about loss and regret with beauty.

Elizabeth Strout

I enjoy nearly any novel by Elizabeth Strout. 

Olive Kitteridge is one, My Name is Lucy Barton is another. They’re nearly always set in places like Maine. 

Her characters can weave into one another’s stories. So Olive Kitteridge will turn up in Lucy Barton’s story, for example. 

She stitches them together. I love her writing, her contemplation of life. 

She writes about the later stages of life when people are coping with themes of loss, bereavement, illness, advancing years. She writes with real bite.

Enda Walsh

I’ve gone to the theatre all my life. The last play I saw was a play by Enda Walsh called Safe House at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre. 

He’s a very interesting writer. I’m not sure where the stature of the playwright is in Ireland now in cultural terms. 

Enda Walsh. Picture: Dan Linehan

I don’t think plays are as central to our culture as they used to be, but Enda Walsh is an amazing writer. 

He also wrote the screenplay for Small Things Like These. He’s got an incredible back catalogue, starting out with Disco Pigs way back in the 90s.

The Rest is Politics

I like The Rest is Politics podcast big time because of my interest in politics. It’s presented by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. 

They’re incredibly well informed. They talk about the British set-up, about world affairs.

They do deep-dive interviews with leading political figures like, say, Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK chancellor with Liz Truss. 

Never in a month of Sundays would I have thought I’d be interested in listening to an ex-, short-lived British chancellor of the exchequer, but their questioning is great. 

They can disagree. They often get it wrong, incorrectly predicting things. You don’t feel there’s any fat on it — it’s all solid content, pretty serious stuff. I like those guys.

RTÉ Documentary On One

I love crime podcasts. Liam O’Brien and his RTÉ Documentary On One series are extraordinary at them. 

‘The Nobody Zone’ was brilliant. ‘The Real Carrie Jade’ was excellent. I’m very proud that the documentary style, the quality of the crafting of that podcast is much better than the Sue Perkins one. 

Just the research, the journalism, the finding of the characters, the knitting of it together, was superb. It’s such a story to have on our doorstep.