Dublin City Libraries & Archives

Dr. Brian Hanley talks about the IRA and Nazi Germany. Brian Hanley is a historian and author. He has written widely on Irish republicanism and radicalism, including ‘The IRA, 1926-36’ and (with Scott Millar ‘The Lost Revolution: the Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party. Brian Hanley is Historian in Residence at Dublin City Library and Archives, 2017. His areas of expertise include soci...

Our modern conception of childhood as a time of education and innocence began to emerge in the eighteenth century, but it wasn’t until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that such ideas influenced the lives of children of all classes in the western world. How and why did this happen? Marnie Hay is a historian and the author of Bulmer Hobson and the Nationalist Movement in Twentieth-...

On the evening of Thursday, 22 June, literary award winners José Eduardo Agualusa and Daniel Hahn gave a reading, followed by a Q&A session, introduced and moderated by Sinéad Crowley, in Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse Street. Author José Eduardo Agualusa and translator Daniel Hahn were announced as winners of the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award for Agulusa's novel A General Theory...

Allan Mallinson & Hugh Sebag-Montefiore in conversation with Jennifer Wellington Historical debate about World War I now boils down to views: the “Blackadder”, Lions-led-by-Donkeys view of senseless carnage orchestrated by blimpish generals; or the view that the generals have been much maligned and actually achieved a stunning victory despite the enormous human cost. Here, in the Centenary year of...

Alex Von Tunzelmann in conversation with Dr Balázs Apor Blood and Sand is essential to our understanding of the modern Middle East, and the problems of oil, religious fundamentalism and international unity that still face the world today. It is a tale of conspiracy and revolutions, spies and terrorists, kidnappings and assassination plots, the fall of the British Empire and the rise of American he...

John Bowman in conversation with Patrick Geoghegan Ireland: The Autobiography offers a fresh, vivid take on the last century of Irish life through a brilliant collection of eyewitness accounts and recollections. Broadcaster and historian John Bowman has spent years mining archives, diaries and memoirs to create a remarkably varied and intense mosaic of voices and perspectives. Collectively, they g...

Geoffrey Roberts in conversation with Judith Devlin Joseph Stalin was a voracious reader. Mostly he read government documents and the revolutionary classics but he also read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Balzac. By the time he died his library contained some 20,000 volumes. The books in Stalin’s personal library provide vital clues to what motivated his thoughts a...

Listen back to authors Danielle McLaughlin and Roisín O'Donnell reading from their collections and discussing their creative writing process. Recorded in the Central Library on 7 April 2017 as part of their Contemporary Irish Literature Series which took place during March and April 2017. Danielle’s debut collection of short stories Dinosaurs On Other Planets, was published in Ireland in 2015 by T...

Phil Scraton and Adrian Tempany in conversation with Paul Howard On 15th April 1989, 96 men, women and children who attended an FA Cup match in Sheffield never came home. Victims of criminal negligence and complacency, they died needlessly and what followed would compound the agony of their loved ones for decades. In April 2016, an inquest jury finally ruled that the victims were unlawfully killed...

Frank Dikötter in conversation with Isabella Jackson After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate his enemies. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge China of bourgeois, capitalist elements by subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment and torture. This third volume in Frank Diköt...

Roger Moorhouse in conversation with Robert Gerwarth. For nearly two years the two most infamous dictators in history actively collaborated with one another. The Nazi-Soviet Pact stunned the world. WWII was launched under its auspices and its eventual collapse led to the war’s defining and deciding clash. In The Devils’ Alliance Roger Moorhouse tells the full story for the first time, from the mot...

Saul David in conversation with Keelin Shanley On 3rd July 1976, Israeli Special Forces carried out a daring raid to free more than a hundred Israeli, French and US hostages held by German and Palestinian terrorists at Entebbe Airport, Uganda. The legacy of this mission is still felt today in the way Western governments respond to terrorist blackmail. Now, with the mission largely forgotton or eve...

Robert Gerwarth in conversation with Anthony McElligott. For the Western allies 11th November 1918 signified the end of fighting which had destroyed a generation. It also vindicated the terrible sacrifices made in the defeat of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. But for much of the rest of Europe the end of World War 1 ushered in a nightmarish series of conflicts. In his gripping bo...

Dublin Festival of History 2016 panel with Martina Devlin, Diarmaid Ferriter, Patsy McGarry, Ronan McGreevy, Margaret O’Callaghan and moderator Sarah Carey. Despite the many dire warnings of the risks involved in the 1916 commemorations, the general consensus confirmed that Ireland had not only conducted them with dignity and gravitas but had also succeeded in igniting a public mood of pride and c...

Listen to award-winning Irish author Sara Baume as she reads from her second novel a line made by walking, and discusses how she came to write this, and her debut novel, spill, simmer, falter, wither. Recorded at the Central Library on 9 March 2017, as part of the Contemporary Irish Literature Series. (See also: Hearts and Minds with Donal Ryan and Martin Dyar) 'A line made by walking' charts a yo...

Booker-nominated novelist Donal Ryan and Patrick Kavanagh Award-winning poet Martin Dyar visited the Central Library on 2 March 2017 for a special evening of collaborative and interactive explorations of their work. Donal and Martin read from their own works and read excerpts from each others work in a special call and response format. The two writers discuss their writing process and the centrali...

Paul Rouse in conversation with Joe Molloy at Dublin Festival of History 2016. Paul Rouse’s landmark Sport and Ireland was the first history of sport in this country, locating it within Irish political, social, and cultural history, and within the global history of sport. It demonstrated that there are unique aspects of Ireland’s sporting history which are defined by the peculiarities of life on a...

'Gentlemen’s Daughters in Dublin Cloisters: The social world of nuns in early 18th century Dublin', the 20th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Lecture, was given by Dr Bernadette Cunningham, Royal Irish Academy at the Dublin City Library and Archive on Wednesday, 25 January 2017. Dr Bernadette Cunningham is Deputy Librarian at the Royal Irish Academy and she is an expert on the history of 17th and 18th c...

From 2011 to 2013 the Orchestra of St Cecilia performed the first three series of Haydn symphonies (18 concerts and 54 symphonies)at the Newman University Church, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, a building possessing splendid acoustics and architectural magnificence. The Orchestra of St Cecilia was formed in January 1995. Drawn from the finest of Dublin’s professional musicians, it has a notable reput...

From 2011 to 2013 the Orchestra of St Cecilia performed the first three series of Haydn symphonies (18 concerts and 54 symphonies)at the Newman University Church, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, a building possessing splendid acoustics and architectural magnificence. The Orchestra of St Cecilia was formed in January 1995. Drawn from the finest of Dublin’s professional musicians, it has a notable reput...

From 2011 to 2013 the Orchestra of St Cecilia performed the first three series of Haydn symphonies (18 concerts and 54 symphonies)at the Newman University Church, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, a building possessing splendid acoustics and architectural magnificence. The Orchestra of St Cecilia was formed in January 1995. Drawn from the finest of Dublin’s professional musicians, it has a notable reput...

From 2011 to 2013 the Orchestra of St Cecilia performed the first three series of Haydn symphonies (18 concerts and 54 symphonies)at the Newman University Church, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, a building possessing splendid acoustics and architectural magnificence. The Orchestra of St Cecilia was formed in January 1995. Drawn from the finest of Dublin’s professional musicians, it has a notable reput...

Liz D’Arcy talks about conserving the Wide Street Commission Maps. Between 1757 and 1851, the Wide Street Commission had a major impact on the development of Dublin, transforming it from a medieval city to the Dublin we know today. Dublin City Archives hold the Wide Street Commission Archives, comprising maps, minute books and architectural drawings. Recorded in front of a live audience at Dublin...

Harold Clarke gives a charming account of restoring the beautiful Georgian building, number 19 North Great George's Street. Hear about the challenges Harold faced during his faithful restoration of the house and the delightful features he uncovered, most particularly its beautiful decorative plasterwork. Recorded in front of a live audience at Dublin City Hall on 24 August 2016 as part of the Dubl...

Writer and poet Gerard Hanberry reveals the inspiration behind well-known Irish songs and ballads. Learn the often surprising, sometimes bittersweet but always absorbing stories of the real women who inspired some of the world’s finest love songs. Recorded in front of a live audience at the Central Library on 23 August 2016 as part of the Libraries' Heritage Week Programme. Gerry Hanberry is a wri...