History Ireland

Recorded on Tuesday 26 November at 7pm @ National Photographic Archive, Temple Bar How valid is the assumption that because the War of Independence and Civil War are considered ‘low rape’ conflicts there is little to address in the arena of sexual assault?  To consider this question History Ireland  editor Tommy Graham was joined, for a ground-breaking discussion, by Linda Connolly, Lindsey Earner...

@ Mechanics Institute, Galway (in association with the ICTU & the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class, NUI Galway) recorded at 8pm on Friday 8 Nov 2019 James Connolly, executed for his part in the 1916 Rising, famously asserted that ‘The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland; the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour’. But how did this pan out in the subsequent War of Indepe...

Recorded @ Malahide Community School 2pm Thursday 19 September 2019 A century on—how do we view the War of Independence? How has recent scholarship changed our view of the War of Independence? What new sources are now available? And has this in turn affected how we commemorate these events?  History Ireland  editor, Tommy Graham, chaired this special Hedge School, geared towards senior cycle histo...

David Fitzpatrick’s Politics and Irish Life, 1913–21: provincial experience of war and revolution (1977) reassessed In association with Clare County Library  recorded @ Temple Gate Hotel, Ennis on Saturday, 14 Sept 2019 at 2pm The untimely passing of Prof. David Fitzpatrick (TCD) earlier this year provided an opportunity to reassess his ground-breaking 1977 local study of County Clare, which was t...

Recorded @ Edinburgh University, Meadows Lecture Theatre, Wednesday 15 May 2019 To what extent did revolutionary developments abroad shape what happened within Ireland during the revolutionary period 1919–23? And in what ways did events within Ireland impact beyond Irish shores, for instance amongst the large Irish diaspora population and other national groups? To discuss this generally, and the c...

History Ireland  Hedge school at the  Anonymous Was A Woman exhibition launch @ Linen Hall Library, Belfast Friday 12 April 2019 The exhibition makes use of the Linen Hall Library’s extensive collections and archives to highlight the historical advancements for women across education, employment and politics. The launch was  followed by a special  History Ireland  Hedge School, A century of Women...

The runaway success of the Atlas of the Irish Revolution (and the parallel TV documentary) and the proliferation of microstudies of the War of Independence and Civil War seems to bear out the adage that, like politics, all history is local. But is it? Do we risk losing sight of the ‘bigger picture’, of a world torn apart by war, revolution, and state formation? What, for example, can either approa...

To mark the selection this year (2019) of Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls trilogy as Dublin’s ‘One City One Book’, the History Ireland Hedge School considered the issue of censorship. Banned on its release in 1960,  The Country Girls  is often credited with breaking the silence on sexual matters in ‘Catholic Ireland’. While by the 1970s such censorship had been considerably relaxed, it was replaced b...

Seminar and History Ireland Hedge School held @ Ballykisteen Hotel,   Limerick Junction, Co. Tipperary. 19 January 2019. A wide ranging discussion on the impact and legacy of Soloheadbeg, including the following topics and speakers. The discussion was chaired by Tommy Graham, editor of History Ireland National and international context—Noreen Higgins McHugh. December 1918 general election in Tippe...

recorded @ National Photographic Archive, Temple Bar pm Tuesday 4 December 2018 History Ireland  editor, Tommy Graham, was joined by a panel of experts — Brian Hanley, Liz Gillis, Niamh Puirséil — for a discussion to coincide with the National Library’s photographic exhibition covering the turbulent years of 1918 and 1919. Covering the end of the First World War, the suffragette movement, the glob...

In Association with Dublin Port Venue: Dublin Port HQ, Alexander Road, East Wall  Time: 2.30PM – 3.30PM  The popularity of Quinnipiac University’s travelling exhibition,  Coming Home: Art & the Great Hunger (opening in An tSeaneaglais [Glassworks], Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Derry, in January 2019) and the recent release of the film  Black ’47 have renewed popular interest in the Great Hunger. For...

recorded @ Bedford Hall, Dublin Castle 2.30pm Friday 2 November 2018 A hundred years ago women in Ireland (then part of the UK) got the vote. To mark a century of women’s subsequent involvement in politics and public life, Dublin Castle is hosting a special exhibition in the Coach House. In conjunction, History Ireland editor Tommy Graham hosted a Hedge School for teachers and schools with Sinéad...

Recorded at the National Maritime Museum, Haigh Terrace, Dún Laoghaire 7 October 2018 Just before 10am on 10 October 1918, east of the Kish Bank, two torpedoes fired by the German submarine UB-123 struck the 2,640-ton packet steamship RMS Leinster, en route to Holyhead, causing her to sink rapidly; over 500 lost their lives, out of a total of over 800. It was sadly ironic that only a few days prev...

Recorded on Friday, 27 APRIL 2018 at 7pm Venue: @ CAFE Readers’ and Writers’ Festival, Cobh Library, Co. Cork The twentieth century was the century of mass death and yet, contrary to popular perception, the greatest killer of all time was neither Hitler nor Stalin, but was an illness often mistakenly associated with the common cold—epidemic influenza. It infected one billion people around the glob...

Recorded on: Monday, 23 APRIL 2018 at 7pm. Venue: @ Liberty Hall, Dublin 1 On 23 April 1918 the Irish Trades Union Congress, and the ITGWU in particular, called a one-day general strike against the imposition of conscription and brought the country to a standstill. While it was the largest strike to date in Irish history, it was, uniquely, fully endorsed by both the employers and the Catholic Chur...

Recorded @ Kilkenny Medieval Mile Museum  on Friday, 16 March 2018 at 6.30pm The difference between history and archaeology is the difference between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens . The latter is more technologically advanced, and the former, although casually misunderstood, nevertheless boasts a bigger brain. Yet, it is hard to imagine one without the other’. This tongue-cheek observation is attri...

Recorded on Wednesday, 14 March 2018 at 7pm @ The Officers’ Mess, Custume Barracks, Athlone March 2018 marks the centenary of the death of John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which had dominated party political life since the heyday of Parnell in the 1880s. It would all but be wiped out by Sinn Féin in the December 1918 General Election. Was that inevitable? To what extent was R...

Recorded on Tuesday 27 February at 7pm in the National Library, Kildare Street, Dublin 2 In Ireland in the revolutionary period, cinema was the latest form of mass entertainment. Previously ignored as a pernicious working class fad both by the British authorities and by their nationalist opponents, its propaganda potential was quickly recognised; in 1916 the British government sponsored the produc...

@ Abbey Arts Centre, Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal 7pm Sat 11 Nov ‘17 Unlike Ballyshannon’s other famous son, Rory Gallagher, poet William Allingham (b. 1824) spent most of his adult life in his native town before moving to London in 1870. His lyrical and descriptive poetry, while somewhat out of fashion today, was a huge influence on W.B. Yeats and, later John Hewitt. Yeats made his observation short...

@ the National Library, Kildare Street 7pm Tues 21 Nov On 10 September 1967, Minister for Education Donogh O’Malley announced a scheme for free secondary education, much to the surprise of his cabinet colleagues, and of the Department of Finance in particular. But once word was out, there was no going back; expectations had been raised and the public response was hugely supportive. Within a decade...

@ Dublin Book Fesitval, RDS Library,   Dublin.  2.30pm Sun 5 Nov As part of the Dublin Book Festival, Tommy Graham, Editor of History Ireland magazine, hosts a discussion with Joseph E.A. Connell Jr (author of Michael Collins: Dublin 1916–22, Wordwell 2017) and David McCullagh (author of  De Valera (Volume 1): Rise 1882–1932 ), Gill Books 2017). Author Joe Connell contributes a regular column to H...

@ St Werburgh’s Church, Werburgh Street. 7pm Wed 18 October 2017 Tommy Graham, Editor of History Ireland magazine, led a discussion panel to discuss the Reformation on the occasion of its 500th anniversary. Included on the panel were Adrian Empey (C of I Historical Soc.), John McCafferty (UCD), Alison Forrestal (NUIG), Gesa Thiessen (TCD).

@ Railway Heritage Festival, Eclipse Cinema, Bundoran, Co. Donegal 8pm Sat 30 Sept 2017 marks 60 years since the closure of the Great Northern Railway and the last train to leave Bundoran station. Tommy Graham , Editor of History Ireland magazine, led a Hedge School discussion panel that included Marc Geagan , Peter Rigney , Jonathan Bardon and Hugh Dougherty . They discussed the genesis, ramifica...

3pm Sun 3 Sept The Bolshevik Revolution — in the dustbin of history? In the face of claims of the total triumph of neo-liberal capitalism and a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how should we mark the century of the Bolshevik Revolution? Should it be consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’ — or can it be recycled? History Ireland editor, Tommy Graham, was joined for a no-holds-barre...

14th September 2017 @ Cavan County Museum, Virgina Road, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan. When one thinks of folklore study and folklore collecting south of the border, the Protestant community is not normally the first sector of society to spring to mind. A major collecting project being undertaken by the National Folklore Collection, focusing on Irish Protestants as a cultural group, seeks to redress t...