Martin Doyle, Dirty Linen – 26 Jan

We are delighted to kick off 2024 with a collaboration with our friends at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith, home to many of our events over recent years. Martin Doyle will be joining us not in his more familiar capacity as the Literary Editor of the Irish Times but as an author in his own right. His Dirty Linen – The Troubles in My Home Place is a personal and profound exploration of the impact of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish in County Down, Tullylish – part of both the Linen Triangle, heartland of the North’s defining industry, and the Murder Triangle, an area devastated by paramilitary violence. Martin Doyle, who grew up there, lifts the veil of silence drawn over the horrors of the past, recording in heartrending detail the toll the conflict took and the long tail of trauma it has left behind.

Doyle skilfully weaves together the two strands of history, with the decline of the local linen industry serving as a metaphor for the descent into communal violence, but also for the solidarity that transcended the sectarian divide. Neighbours and classmates who lost loved ones in the conflict, survivors maimed in bomb attacks and victims of sectarianism, both Catholic and Protestant, entrust him with their poignant stories. This unforgettable chorus of victims’ voices tells a terrible truth, but the survivors’ stories of endurance and love will also inspire and restore one’s faith in humanity.

All paid up ILS members can claim a code to redeem a free ticket, just contact the Secretary for the code: irishlitsoc@gmail.com.

• ICC Ticket option
• ILS Ticket option

Dirty Linen (Merrion Press, 2023)

 

Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times, which he joined in 2007.He started his career in London in 1990 with The Irish World, joined The Irish Post in 1992 and became its editor before moving in 2001 to The Irish Times. He edited A History of The Irish Post, which was published in 2000 to mark the newspaper’s thirtieth anniversary. A native of Banbridge, County Down, he is a graduate of the University of St Andrews, where he studied French and German. He contributed an essay to The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices (Unbound, 2021) and to The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace (forthcoming)

Anne Flaherty

Anne Flaherty

Anne Flaherty is a journalist who was born in London and grew up in County Clare. Anne has worked for the Irish Press in Dublin and The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from Africa and Asia. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey. Anne is a Trustee of the ICC key and a member of its literature programming team.