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He loved a good funeral. He would go to the funerals of people he didn’t know. He used to rate them. Mostly it was about how generous they were with the drink and how much singing there was. He always said the English didn’t know how to die.

Dennis O’Neill has died, and his family gather at the hospital as the priest prays for his soul.

Whilst two sons try to remember how to mourn the dead, an older generation evokes the remorse and sense of loss of unwilling migrants from an indifferent Ireland.

The Magic Hour is a darkly comic family drama set in a waiting room of a London hospital.