• ILS / Irish Texts Society Annual lecture – POSTPONED

    Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith, United Kingdom

    THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. THE EVENT WILL RUN IN OUR 2020-21 SEASON. The scholar Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail visits the Society to deliver our joint annual Noel O'Connell memorial talk with the Irish Texts Society. Her subject is Thomas O’Connor (alias Tomás Ó Conchubhair, b. 1798), originally from the civil parish of Templemolaga, Co. ...

  • Gail McConnell and Stephen Sexton – 25 October

    Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith, United Kingdom

      To kick off the 2021 ILS season and welcome everyone back to physically present meetings we are delighted to be at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith to give a London launch to two new poetry volumes from Stephen Sexton and Gail McConnell. We'll also be featuring the Irish Poets in the UK edition of the Agenda poetry magazine with ...

  • Irish-London – 8 November

    Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith, United Kingdom

    Professor Richard Kirkland joins in conversation with Roy Foster, the Society's Vice President, on Kirkland’s new book Irish London: A Cultural History 1850–1916 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). In the years following the Irish Famine (1845–52), London became one of the cities of Ireland. The number of Irish in London swelled to over 100,000 and from this mass migration emerged a distinctive ...

  • Reflections from the Border – 15 November

    The Bloomsbury Hotel The Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London, United Kingdom

      As tension persists over the future of the Protocol and frustration is leading to renewed speculation of the possibility of a United Ireland we engage with four writers whose work is gathered in a landmark new anthology reflecting on the border. The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island, 2021) is a landmark anthology of fiction, non-fiction ...

  • Bandit Country, James Conor Patterson – 17 October

    The Bloomsbury Hotel The Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London, United Kingdom

    ​Joining us at the start of the ILS 2022-23 season are the poet James Conor Patterson and writer Darran Anderson to launch Patterson's book bandit country. bandit country is the much-anticipated debut collection from James Conor Patterson, who will be familiar to ILS regulars from our event last year launching his anthology of essays on the Irish border: The New ...

    £8.00
  • Jess Kidd and Mike Dash on the Batavia – 27 March

    The Bloomsbury Hotel The Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London, United Kingdom

    We're delighted to welcome back Jess Kidd to the Society to discuss her novel, The Night Ship. The novel is based on the extraordinary story of the Batavia, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company that in 1628 was wrecked on Morning Reef, on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off western coast of Australia. Its wrecking was followed by factions ...

    £6.00
  • Nicole Flattery – 12 April 2023

    Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith, United Kingdom

    New York in the late 1960s: Mae escapes a run-down an apartment, an alcoholic mother and her mother’s occasional boyfriend to a new life as a typist for Andy Warhol, transcribing conversations with his friends and associates to provide the material for an unconventional novel. A mordantly funny investigation of celebrity, obsession, womanhood and sexuality, Nothing Special (Bloomsbury) is itself ...

  • Poetry as Commemoration showcase

    Fitzrovia Chapel Fitzroy Place, 2 Pearson Square, London W1T 3BF, London, United Kingdom

    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 ...

    Free
  • Martin Doyle, Dirty Linen – 26 Jan

    Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith, United Kingdom

    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 – ...

  • Ó Rathaille – 24 Jan

    Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith, United Kingdom

    Join us on Friday 24 Jan for our first event of 2025. We are delighted to welcome back Professor Declan Kiberd to the Society to discuss the life and poetry of Aogán Ó Rathaille (c.1670–1729) and to launch a book by long time ILS member Brian O'Connor of a selection of the poems. Conveying Ó Rathaille's intricate rhythms and rhyme ...

    Free