Richard Leslie Beswetherick Pine is the author of critical works on the Irish playwright Brian Friel, the Anglo-Irish novelist Lawrence Durrell, and aspects of art music in Ireland. He worked for the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ Raidió Teilifís Éireann before moving to Greece in 2001 to found the Durrell School of Corfu, which he directed until 2010. In 2012, to mark the centenary of the birth of Lawrence Durrell, Pine edited and introduced a previously unpublished novel by Durrell, Judith, set in 1940s Palestine. He writes a regular column on Greek affairs in The Irish Times and is also an obituarist for The Guardian.
After university, Pine remained in Ireland, joining Raidió Teilifís Éireann as Concerts Manager, responsible for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. In 1983, he became a senior editor in RTÉ's Public Affairs Division; a post he held for 16 years. He also wrote and presented many programmes for RTÉ Radio, including a 15-part documentary, "Music, Place and People: the Irish Experience 1740–1940" on RTÉ's classical music channel, RTÉ lyric fm. From 1988 to 1990, Pine was Secretary of the Irish Writers' Union and a music critic for The Irish Times. From 1990 to 1994, he was co-editor of the New York-published Irish Literary Supplement. Between 1978 and 1988, Pine was a consultant to the Council of Europe on cultural development programmes. A seminal essay on cultural democracy was published by the Finnish Committee of UNESCO in 1982. Pine has held guest lectureships in cultural studies, literature and Irish studies at the Centre for Cultural Research, Belgrade, University of California, Berkeley, Emory, New York University, Georgia Southern, University of Central Florida, Centre for Irish Studies at CUA, Washington, and the Princess Grace Library, Monaco. In 1989, he was elected a Governor of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, which, in 1998, bestowed on him a Fellowship honoris causa. He resigned from the RIAM in 2006. Since 1978 Pine has been a prolific author of articles and books on Irish theatre and Irish playwrights including Oscar Wilde and Brian Friel. Of Pine's book , the Nobel poet Seamus Heaney wrote "The particularity of quotation joined with the meditative, associative habit of your mind is the book's strength. It provokes a thoughtful response in return and, as such, will be a welcome addition to the critical reaction to Friel. It should deepen the sense of his complexity and modernity, while rendering a sense of those 'truths, immemorially posited'." The Newsbrands Ireland Journalism Awards 2018 voted Richard Pine as "Critic of the Year", citing his "great erudition and fine judgement" as well as his "elegant style".
Greece
Continuing his career as a writer, Pine moved, in 2001, to the Ionian Island of Corfu in Greece to found the Durrell School of Corfu which, for twelve years, hosted seminars on literature and the protection of the environment. The school aimed to enrich international understanding of the writings of Lawrence Durrell and his brother, the innovative ecologist and zoologist, Gerald Durrell. It closed in 2014 and was succeeded in 2016 by the , an online library and website which re-commenced international seminars in 2017. Pine is a frequent guest lecturer at the Ionian University, Corfu. In 2019, he inaugurated the online "C.20 – an international journal" under the aegis of the Durrell Library of Corfu. He continues his association with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland as a writer of concert programme notes.
Family
In 1972, Pine married Melanie Craigen. They have two daughters, Emilie Pine, an essayist and a lecturer in film and drama at University College Dublin and Vanessa Pine, an artist and cookery writer. Pine and Craigen separated in 1983. From 1994 to 2008, Pine's partner was the concert artist and piano professor . In 2018, Emilie Pine published a memoir, Notes to Self, which was voted Book of the Year in the Irish Book Awards.
