Neil Hannon

The world premiere of "To Our Fathers in Distress", a piece for organ, was performed on 22 March 2014, in London, at the Royal Festival Hall. It was inspired by Hannon's father, Rt Rev Brian Hannon, who suffers from Alzheimer's.

In April 2012 Hannon's first opera commission, Sevastopol, was performed by the Royal Opera House. It was part of a program called OperaShots, which invites musicians not typically working within the opera medium to create an opera. Sevastopol was based upon Leo Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches. Hannon's second opera (book by Frank Alva Buecheler, English by Tim Clarke) for which he wrote music, In May, premiered in May 2013 in Lancaster and was shown 2014 with overwhelming success e.g. in Glasgow and Brighton.

A new Divine Comedy album, Bang Goes the Knighthood, was released in May 2010.

Hannon contributed to a musical version of Swallows and Amazons, writing the music while Helen Edmundson wrote the book and lyrics, which premiered in December 2010 at the Bristol Old Vic.

Hannon has also collaborated with Thomas Walsh, from the Irish band Pugwash, to create a cricket-themed pop album under the name The Duckworth Lewis Method. The first single, "The Age of Revolution", was released in June 2009, and a full-length album released the week after. The group's second album, Sticky Wickets, came out in 2013.

In 2006 it was announced that Hannon was to lend his vocal ability to the Doctor Who soundtrack CD release, recording two songs — "Love Don't Roam" for the 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride", and a new version of "Song For Ten", originally used in 2005's "The Christmas Invasion". On 12 January 2007, The Guardian website's "Media Monkey" diary column reported that Doctor Who fans from the discussion forum on the fan website Outpost Gallifrey were attempting to organise mass downloads of the Hannon-sung "Love Don't Roam", which was available as a single release on the UK iTunes Store. This was in order to attempt to exploit the new UK singles chart download rules, and get the song featured in the Top 40 releases.

The same year Hannon added his writing and vocal talents to the Air album Pocket Symphony, released in the United States on 6 March 2007. He is featured on the track "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping", for which he wrote the lyrics. This song had been originally written for and sung by Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album, 5:55. Though it was not included in its 2006 European release, it was added as a bonus track for its American release on 24 April 2007.

Hannon won the 2007 Choice Music Prize for his 2006 album, Victory for the Comic Muse. It was announced the next day that he had left EMI by 'mutual consent'. And he won the 2015 Legend Award from the Oh Yeah organisation in Belfast.

In 2004 he played alongside the Ulster Orchestra for the opening event of the Belfast Festival at Queen's. In 2005, he contributed vocals to his long-time collaborator Joby Talbot's soundtrack for the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In 2000 he and Joby Talbot contributed four tracks for Ute Lemper's collaboration album, Punishing Kiss.

Hannon is founder and mainstay of The Divine Comedy, a band which achieved their biggest commercial success in the mid to late 1990s with the albums Casanova (1996), A Short Album About Love (1997), and Fin de Siècle (1998). Hannon continues to release albums under The Divine Comedy name, the most recent being Office Politics (2019).

Hannon was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, the son of Brian Hannon, a Church of Ireland minister at the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe and later Bishop of Clogher. He spent some of his youth in Fivemiletown before moving with his family to Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, in 1982. While there, he attended Portora Royal School.

Edward Neil Anthony Hannon (born 7 November 1970) is a Northern Irish singer and songwriter. He is the creator and front man of the chamber pop group The Divine Comedy, and is the band's sole constant member. Hannon wrote the theme tunes for the television sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd.