BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Irish Literary Society - ECPv6.16.5//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Irish Literary Society X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Irish Literary Society REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20220327T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20221030T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20230326T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20231029T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20240331T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20241027T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T010000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20250522T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20250522T203000 DTSTAMP:20250429T214350Z CREATED:20250429T211357Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250429T214350Z UID:21030-1747942200-1747945800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Foreign Tongues - 22 May DESCRIPTION:The Annual Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture\, a joint venture of the Irish Literary Society and Irish Texts Society will be delivered by Phyllis Gaffney on her recent book Foreign Tongues\nVictorian Language Learning and the Shaping of Modern Ireland which is the first historical overview of the study of languages in Ireland. \n \nHow history shifts languages and languages in turn shape history is a deep-rooted\, dynamic process manifest in Victorian Ireland. In Foreign Tongues\, Gaffney sheds new light on this period of Irish history\, exploring how continental influences that predated the Penal Laws were reinvigorated in the wake of the French Revolution. An influx of foreign teachers and religious orders created institutions for an emerging élite\, and University education expanded. At the same time\, civil service reforms opened careers across the British Empire to graduates from all religions. The result is that Ireland’s Victorian colleges embraced language study—ancient and modern\, Irish and European—more eagerly than their British counterparts. \n[Prof. Gaffney] dissects for instance the travails\nof the Irish language since independence and partition. Its pride of place as a\nrepository of idealism and its status as the country’s first official language\ncoexist with problems on the ground such as well-documented difficulties in\nteaching it and\, one might add\, disaffection on the part of many of the young\npeople studying it. .Grace Neville\nUniversity College Cork\,\n\n \nAn adaptive\, fast-changing academic landscape laid the groundwork for today’s Ireland—culturally confident\, open to Europe and the world—while the dramatic rise of the Gaelic League forged a bond between language\, education\, and politics with pervasive effects on Irish identities in the twentieth century. Gaffney will outline some profiles of individual professors to reveal pioneering scholarship\, precarious careers\, sudden scandals\, and denunciations and dismissals linked to local conflicts and foreign wars. Her book documents how the advance of women’s education cleared the path for a cohort of notable female professors across modern languages. \n\n \n  \n Speaker: Professor Phyllis Gaffney\n\n\n\n Phyllis Gaffney\nPhyllis Gaffney is a researcher who has taught at Carysfort College of Education and University College Dublin. She is the author of several books\, most recently The Medieval Imagination: Mirabile Dictu. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/foreign-tongues-22-may/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:history,Irish language,lecture,Nationalism,Reading ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/foreign-tongues-banner.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20241007T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20241007T203000 DTSTAMP:20240928T112120Z CREATED:20240925T001758Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240928T112120Z UID:20446-1728329400-1728333000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Shivaun O'Casey - 7 Oct DESCRIPTION:In the year of the centenary of the inaugural production of Juno and the Paycock we welcome Shivaun O’Casey\, daughter of playwright Sean O’Casey and actress Eileen Carey\, to speak at the Society to give insight into growing up in the O’Casey household\, her father’s work and her own work as a theatre director:”My parents never encouraged me to go into theatre\, because they knew it was spasmodic work and involved a lot of heartbreak.”\n\nShivaun was born in 1939\, by which time O’Casey had become fed up with his treatment by the Irish literary establishment and moved to south-west England. As co-executor with her brother Breon of the O’Casey literary estate\, she was responsible for turning over the huge O’Casey archive to the National Library and continues to manage the Sean O’Casey Estate. Coinciding with a major revival of the work in London the conversation with O’Casey expert Dr Michelle Paull will touch on the production history of Juno and the Paycock\, the writing of the play\, the reaction to the O’Casey’s work and the effect of that on Sean and his relationship to Ireland. The actress Esther O’Casey\, granddaughter to Sean\, will contribute readings from the work. \n\n\n Speakers: Shivaun O'Casey\n\n\n\n Shivaun O’Casey\nShivaun O’Casey began directing and producing in New York City in 1987 with Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days\, followed by Baglady (Frank McGuinness)\, and Purple Dust (Sean O’Casey). In 1991\, she formed The O’Casey Theater Company\, based both in Northern Ireland and New York\, The company produced three international tours: The Shadow of a Gunman\, Three Shouts from a Hill\, The Plough and the Stars – and finally\, for performance in Derry only\, Behind the Green Curtains. She manages the Sean O’Casey Estate and directed and narrated the documentary on her father Under a Coloured Cap (2004) that profiles her father’s life of hardship and triumph\, idealism and disenchantment. \n\nDr Michelle Paull\n\n\n\n Dr Michelle Paull\nDr Michelle Paull of (St Mary’s University\, Twickenham) is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Michelle’s PhD at Goldsmiths’ College\, University of London focused on the theatre of Sean O’Casey and she is currently working on her monograph\, Sean O’Casey: Critical Controversies. Michelle’s research and teaching interests include contemporary theatre\, London theatre\, Irish plays\, Sean O’Casey\, adaptations on stage and screen and contemporary writing in English.. \n\n\n\n\n\nEsther O'Casey\n\n\n\n Esther O’Casey\nA recent graduate of GUILDHALL SCHOOL OF MUSIC & DRAMA\, BA (Hons) Acting. See: Guildhall. \n\n\n\n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/shivaun-ocasey-7-oct/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:archive,children,emigration,Nationalism,theatre ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ocasey-banner-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20240126T200000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20240126T210000 DTSTAMP:20240120T134525Z CREATED:20240113T192626Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240120T134525Z UID:20173-1706299200-1706302800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Martin Doyle\, Dirty Linen - 26 Jan DESCRIPTION: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. \n\nDoyle 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. \n \n \nAll paid up ILS members can claim a code to redeem a free ticket\, just contact the Secretary for the code: irishlitsoc@gmail.com.\n \n\nICC Ticket optionILS Ticket option Tickets are available online and at the venue from the Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith: TICKET LINK > The ILS 6 month membership option is now open covering all events January to July 2024: MEMBERSHIP SUBS LINK >\n\n\n \n\n\nSuperb\, really important and moving work that brings the reality of the Troubles to life and restores the human tragedy to its proper place in public memory… a vital\, potent and moving piece of work. — Fintan O’Toole. \n\n\nDirty Linen (Merrion Press\, 2023) \n  \n\n\n\n \n  \n Speakers: Martin Doyle\n\n\n\n Martin Doyle\nMartin 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) \n\nAnne Flaherty\n\n\n\n Anne Flaherty\nAnne 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. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/martin-doyle-dirty-linen-26-jan/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,Border,crime,documentary,London-Irish,Nationalism,politics,Reading,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/dirty-linen-banner.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231127T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231127T210000 DTSTAMP:20231121T133218Z CREATED:20231008T180552Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231121T133218Z UID:20028-1701113400-1701118800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Resting Places - 27 Nov DESCRIPTION:Join us for the London launch of a fascinating new work by Dr Ellen McWilliams. Resting Places: On Wounds\, War and the Irish Revolution could be read as a memoir or a collection of personal essays\, but it is neither – literary scholar Lucy McDiarmid describes it as ‘the creation of a new literary form’. Resting Places offers up an Irishwoman’s elegy for two revolutionists\, Oliver Cromwell and Terence James MacSwiney\, a meditation on the unexpected correspondences between the English Civil War of the seventeenth century and the Irish Civil War of the 1920s\, a prayer to John Milton and William Shakespeare\, and a keen for a Famine Road and for the troubled history of the plantation town of Bandon in Co. Cork. The book emerged from an article in the Irish Times. \nAt the centre of McWilliams’s threnody is a massacre that took place a century ago in West Cork but might as well have been yesterday. It is unforgotten and will continue to be so as her son learns about that “exquisitely painful” time and finds the solace she found in taut prose which is a balm even though it treats of colonial crimes\, republican crimes\, the contagion of faith\, the weight of history and fractured families.’Jonathan Meades\n\nMcWilliams reflects on her Catholic upbringing in West Cork in the 1980s and 1990s\, and on relations with her Protestant neighbours. She is haunted by the killings in the period of Ireland’s War of Independence and Civil War\, and in particular by the ‘Dunmanway massacre’ of April 1922 which marked the area where she grew up. Her great grandmother was active in Cumann na mBan and her granduncle fought for independence as well as in the anti-Treaty IRA. The book reveals why the events of those days remain deeply personal and how they shape her adult life as she moves to England\, marries an expert on Cromwell and the English Civil War\, teaches Irish literature at an English university\, experiences pregnancy and childbirth\, and nurtures her son in his early years. \nImage: Crowds of onlookers throng St Patrick St on the day following the burning of Cork City centre by crown forces. \n The event will be followed by a signing. \n\n\n \n  \n Speakers: Dr Ellen McWilliams\n\n\n\n Dr Ellen McWilliams\nDr Williams’ interests are in the fields of twentieth-century women’s fiction\, anti-colonial history and the aftershocks of colonial violence\, intergenerational memory/postmemory\, literary responses to the pain of revolution and civil war\, political violence and literary form\, and migration and diasporic identity. She is a member of the Routes: Migraton\, Mobility\, Displacement Network and the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict. She has written three academic books\, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009)\, Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction (2013)\, and Irishness in North American Women’s Writing: Transatlantic Affinities (2021). She is a member of the University’s research network\, Routes: Migration\, Mobility\, Displacement. She also has a special interest in New York magazine culture and has published four essays on Maeve Brennan’s writing for The New Yorker\, including ‘”A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design”: Maeve Brennan\, Self-Fashioning\, and the Uses of Style’ for Women: A Cultural Review and an article on Brennan’s years at Harper’s Bazaar\, ‘Maeve Brennan\, Celebrity\, and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s’. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/resting-places-27-november/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:anniversary,book signing,feminism,interview,Nationalism,Reading,research,social history,violence,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/resting-places-redo.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231027T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231027T190000 DTSTAMP:20231008T163202Z CREATED:20231008T154152Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231008T163202Z UID:20012-1698433200-1698433200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Poetry as Commemoration showcase DESCRIPTION:Last year we engaged with Poetry Ireland and the Poetry as Commemoration project in UCD to develop workshops which used poetry as a means to deepen our collective understanding of Ireland’s past and to explore a challenging period of history relating to the War of Independence and Civil War. The three workshops were delivered by Roisin Tierney and Ian Duhig who developed the work of poet members of the Society\, this event provides a stage for those poets to deliver their work. \nWe hope we’ll have a good showing from members to support our poets in the beautiful setting of the Fitzrovia Chapel. This is a free event open to all. c70 mins running time\, a drinks reception will follow. \nThe workshops to develop our poets’ work were sponsored by: URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/poetry-as-commemoration-showcase/ LOCATION:Fitzrovia Chapel\, Fitzroy Place\, 2 Pearson Square\, London W1T 3BF\, London\, Fitzrovia Chapel\, Fitzroy Place\, 2 PeW1T 3BF\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:anniversary,history,London-Irish,Nationalism,poetry,politics,Reading,social history,violence ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/POETRY-COMM-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231023T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231023T210000 DTSTAMP:20231008T172632Z CREATED:20231008T095914Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231008T172632Z UID:19990-1698089400-1698094800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:ILS/ITS Joint Lecture - 23 Oct DESCRIPTION:The Annual Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture\, a joint venture of the Irish Literary Society and Irish Texts Society will be delivered by Dr. Mary MacDiarmada on ‘Art O’Brien and Irish Nationalism in London\, 1900-25’. \n\nLondon-born and reared\, Art O’Brien’s journey from wealthy electrical engineer to leader of Irish militant nationalism in London was\, by any measure\, quite extraordinary. In her talk and in the book on which it is based MacDiarmada uses the life of O’Brien (1872–1949) as a central axis on which to construct an analysis of Irish nationalism in London from 1900 to 1925. \nShedding light on the work of the ‘presiding genius’ of the Irish movement in London [this] publication of Art O’Brien and Irish Nationalism in London 1900-25 by Dr Mary MacDiarmada is a long overdue biography of one of the most fascinating characters of the Irish revolution …Ronan McGreevy (Irish Times\, October 2020)\nO’Brien was a member of the Gaelic League\, Sinn Féin\, the Irish Volunteers\, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain. He also established a prisoner relief organization and had significant involvement in gun-running for the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. Appointed London envoy of Dáil Éireann in 1919\, he was a close confidant of Michael Collins\, Arthur Griffith and Éamon de Valera and was a mediator in various peace initiatives between the British and Sinn Féin during 1920 and 1921. Yet\, despite his extensive contribution to the Irish revolution\, little is known of O’Brien’s activities. \n\nBased on rigorous research in British and Irish archives\, MacDiarmada recounts the vital contribution O’Brien made to the prosecution of the Irish revolution. The talk will also recount the hitherto little-known story of Irish cultural\, political and militant nationalism in London between 1900 and 1925. \n\nImage credit: Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney (left) and Art O’Brien (right) congratulating JJ O’Kelly (centre) on his re-election as President of the Gaelic League at the Mansion House in Dublin in August 1920. Photo: National Library of Ireland\, NPA POLF 170 \n\n \n  \n Speaker: Dr Mary MacDiarmada\n\n\n\n Dr Mary MacDiarmada\nDr Mary MacDiarmada is a Research Fellow in the School of History and Geography\, Dublin City University (DCU). URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ils-its-joint-lecture-23-oct/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:emigration,history,Irish language,lecture,London-Irish,Nationalism,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/art-obrien.png END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR