Dublin Festival of History Podcast

Welcome to the Dublin Festival of History Podcast, brought to you by Dublin City Council.In this episode from the 2021 Dublin Festival of History, we hear from practitioners who have worked on LGBTQ+ in public history, from grassroots projects to archives and museums.The speakers are Richard O’Leary, Maurice J Casey and Kate Drinane. The moderator is Sara Phillips.The episode was recorded at The Printworks, Dublin Castle on the 10th of October 2021.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.

Donal Fallon speaks to two writers who have written recent books on the history of Dublin.In O’Connell Street: The History and Life of Dublin’s Iconic Street, Nicola Pierce explores the people, the history, the buildings and the stories behind the main street in our capital.Kathryn Milligan’s Painting Dublin, 1886-1949: Visualising a Changing City represents the first detailed study of the depiction of Dublin in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. It demonstrates the important role played by the portrayal and experience of urban life, a role shaped by huge historical, political, and social change.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.

George III, Britain’s longest-reigning king, has gone down in history as ‘the cruellest tyrant of this age’. Andrew Roberts’s new biography takes entirely the opposite view. It portrays George as intelligent, benevolent, scrupulously devoted to the constitution of his country and (as head of government as well as head of state) navigating the turbulence of eighteenth-century politics with a strong sense of honour and duty.He was a devoted husband and family man, a great patron of the arts and sciences, keen to advance Britain’s agricultural capacity (‘Farmer George’) and determined that her horizons should be global. He could be stubborn and self-righteous, but he was also brave, brushing aside numerous assassination attempts, galvanising his ministers and generals at moments of crisis and stoical in the face of his descent – five times during his life – into a horrifying loss of mind.Andrew Roberts is a biographer and historian of international renown. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, and the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.Lisa Marie Griffith is author of ‘Dublin: Then and Now’ and ‘Stones of Dublin: A History of Dublin in Ten Buildings’ and has published a number of essays on Dublin history. She is co-editor of two edited collections of essays, ‘Leaders of the City: Dublin’s first citizens, 1500–1950’ and ‘Death and Dying in Dublin: 1500 to the Present’.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.

On a sunlit evening in 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially-made surgeon’s blades.The murders ended what should have been a turning point in Anglo-Irish relations. A new spirit of goodwill had been burgeoning between Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland’s leader Charles Stewart Parnell, with both men forging in secret a pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland – with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone’s protégé, to play an instrumental role.The impact of the Phoenix Park murders was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the pact, almost brought down the government and set in motion repercussions that would last long into the twentieth century.Julie Kavanagh is a renowned journalist, former New Yorker London editor, former arts editor of Harpers & Queen and Costa Biography Award finalist.Roy Foster is a distinguished Irish historian and academic. He was the Carroll Professor of Irish History from 1991 until 2016 at Hertford College, Oxford.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.

Twenty years on from her critically acclaimed book, ‘Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People’, Susan McKay talks again to the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. The book contains interviews with politicians, former paramilitaries, victims and survivors, business people, religious leaders, community workers, young people, writers and others. It tackles controversial issues, such as Brexit, paramilitary violence, the border, the legacy of the Troubles, same-sex marriage and abortion, RHI, and the possibility of a United Ireland, and explores social justice issues and campaigns, particularly the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights.Susan McKay is an award-winning writer and commentator and contributes regularly to print and broadcast media, including Guardian/Observer, New York Times, Irish Times and London Review of Books.Martin Doyle is Books Editor of the Irish Times.

Myles Dungan’s family was involved in four violent deaths between 1915 and 1922. Jack Clinton, an immigrant small farmer from County Meath, was murdered in the remote and lawless Arizona territory by a powerful rancher’s hired assassin; three more died in Ireland, and each death is compellingly reconstructed in this extraordinary book. Mark Clinton was murdered by a group of agrarian ‘bandits’ who resented his family’s possession of some disputed acres; his killer was tried and executed by the dead man’s relatives and comrades in the Meath IRA. A mentally challenged youth was shot as an informer by another relative of Dungan’s, and buried in secrecy and silence.Myles Dungan’s book, focused on one family, offers an original perspective on this still controversial period: a prism through which the moral and personal costs of violence, and the elemental conflict over land, come alive.Myles Dungan is an Irish broadcaster and author. He has presented many arts programmes on RTÉ Radio, and has also been a sports broadcaster on RTÉ Television. Since October 2010 he has been the presenter of “The History Show” on RTÉ Radio One.Catriona Crowe is one of Ireland’s leading historians and commentators. She was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2012.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.