27 - 30 June 2024

Hinterland Festival 2018

History

The RTE Radio 1 History Show and Hinterland/Kells will collaborate again this year (having teamed up for Gallipoli100 in 2015) in the first History Show Festival. A dozen leading historians will participate as the festival commemorates the centenary of 1918 and the fiftieth anniversary of 1968.

In our ‘Remembering 1918’ strand Sergeant Paul Maher will examine changing roles of the RIC and the DMP at the end of the Great War. Dr. Emma Lyons of UCD will discuss the role of women in that conflict. RTE presenter Dr. David McCullagh will highlight the increasingly important role of Eamon de Valera, subject of his recent biography, in Irish politics in 1918, while Dr. Ida Milne of TCD will assess the impact on Ireland of  the appalling influenza pandemic of that year. Professor Pauric Travers emeritus professor at DCU will examine the course of the Conscription crisis in April 1918 and beyond, while Liz GillisHistory Show researcher will underline the role played by women in the fight against involuntary enlistment. Broadcaster, archivist and History Show contributor Catriona Crowe will assess the role that Irish suffragists played in the struggle for votes for women, and Professor Roy Foster will look at some of the most significant and influential members of the younger generation of Irish nationalist activists in 1918.

In ‘Remembering 1968’ Catriona Crowe will celebrate the ‘second wave’ feminists of the Women’s Liberation Movement. History Show presenter Dr. Myles Dungan will look at the pivotal 1968 U.S. Presidential election, fought on the hustings and the streets of America. Professor Glen Gendzel from San Jose State University will discuss some of the truisms and the myths of the Vietnam War. Berkeley, California historian Tony Bucher will cast his eye over the radical and subversive underground press in the Bay Area of the late 1960s. He will also mark the legalisation of cannabis in California by looking at the state’s relationship with ‘weed’ in the 1960s.

In addition to our themed events Trim-based historian Noel French will be talking about his new book on the history of our own precious hinterland, Discovering the Boyne Valley.

Liz Gillis

The Battle for Dublin

Event  1 
Venue: Church of Ireland

On the morning of 28 June 1922, Dubliners woke to the sound of the National Army shelling the Four Courts, Headquarters of the anti-Treaty IRA Executive. Three days later, the garrison surrendered - the Four Courts lay in ruins, the Public Records Office was destroyed. Historian Liz Gillis will discuss the opening battle (for the capital city) of the Irish Civil War. It was eight days of a war that lasted eleven months but which affected this country for generations.

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Liz Gillis

Myles Dungan

Murder, Reprisal and Execution in the Irish Civil War

Event  2 
Venue: Church of Ireland

After the initial phase of conventional warfare the conflict moved into a chapter reminiscent of the guerrilla/official reprisal struggle of the War of Independence. While Anti-Treaty Republican forces were responsible for atrocities it was the Free State which wreaked most havoc with 77 executions, extra-judicial killings (Ballyseedy) and unsanctioned murder (Oriel House). It was this phase of the conflict that led to the real bitterness that persisted for decades.

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Myles Dungan

Mary McAuliffe

“She’s a Republican Bitch”; Violence towards anti-treaty women by the National Army and the Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War

Event  3 
Venue: Church of Ireland
This talk addresses the violence against anti-treaty women by the National Army and the Free State Government. Deeply apprehensive about the actions of militant women working with the anti-treaty IRA and anxious about the activities of political anti-treaty women or ‘furies’, they dealt with their concerns through an increase in abusive language and physical violence towards women, as well as gendered and sexual violence. The construct by the State of these women as dangerous (mad and/or bad) would have a long-lasting legacy into the post-war State.
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Mary McAuliffe

John Borgonovo

Battle Fronts and Home Fronts: The Conventional Phase of the Irish Civil War, June – August 1922

Event  4 
Venue: Church of Ireland

After the retreat from Dublin of the anti-Treaty IRA Ireland witnessed the first conventional warfare on its soil since the Williamite/Jacobite war of the late 17th century. Artillery and seaborne landings, briefly replaced ‘hit and run’ guerilla tactics as the two sides tried to take or hold territory. UCC historian John Borgonovo describes this opening phase of the bitter Civil War.

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John Borgonovo

Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc

“Spies & Robbers Beware!" – The IRA’s assassination of alleged spies in the Civil War

Event  5 
Venue: Church of Ireland

Almost 200 alleged civilian spies were killed by the IRA during the War of Independence and these killings have been one of the most controversial aspects of the conflict debated by historians for decades. By  contrast very little is known about the intelligence struggle between the Republican and Free State Forces during the Irish Civil War. Dr Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc will examine the approximately 20 alleged civilian spies executed by the Anti-Treaty IRA to see what their deaths can tell us about that conflict.

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Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc

Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc

"Where the bodies are" - Forced disappearances in Meath during the Irish Revolution

Event  7 
Venue: Church of Ireland

During the Irish War of Independence and Civil War over one hundred people were 'disappeared' by the IRA and the British forces. These victims were executed in secret and their bodies were hidden in fields, bogs and rivers. Dr Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc's lecture will explore the history of this phenomenon in Ireland with a focus on the IRA victims who were 'disappeared' in County Meath.

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Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc

Andrew Sneddon

Witches and (real) witch hunts

Event  9 
Venue: Church of Ireland

Dr Andrew Sneddon will plunge you into the world of the European witch-hunts that claimed 50,000 lives between 1450 and 1782, and tell stories of Irish witches and witch trials.  Vividly told with contemporary artwork, we will encounter along the way, wise women, the demonically possessed, and poltergeists, as well as the great Scottish witch-hunter King James VI/I.

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Andrew Sneddon

Leanne McCormick

Some Bad Bridgets

Event  10 
Venue: Church of Ireland

The Bad Bridget Project tells the stories of those Irish women who emigrated to North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and ended up on the wrong side of the law. Hear about the Irish women who were behind bars for being drunk, stealing, fighting and even murder. These are the emigration stories that are not often told, tales of loneliness and despair, discrimination and drink but also of resilience, survival and determination.

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Leanne McCormick

Damien Shiels

The Andersonville Irish: imprisonment and death in the American Civil War

Event  11 
Venue: Church of Ireland
Between February 1864 and April 1865 some 45,000 U.S. prisoners passed through the gates of Andersonville Prison in Georgia. Almost 13,000 of them never came out again—many of them Irish American. This talk will share findings of the Andersonville Irish Project, established to identify and map the Irish who perished there. Their stories reveal not only the experiences of these men, but also of that their families, and the wider Irish diaspora.
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Damien Shiels

Prof Diarmaid Ferriter

A century of keeping people safe – commemorating 100 years of An Garda Siochána

Event  12 
Venue: Church of Ireland
Within weeks of the transition to the Irish Free State the Royal Irish Constabulary was disbanded and the fledgling administration had established a new unarmed police force.  UCD Professor of Modern Irish History, Dr Diarmuid Ferriter looks back at the highs and lows, the triumphs and the controversies, of the first century of An Garda Siochána.
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Prof Diarmaid Ferriter

Michael Brunnock & band in concert

Event  13 
Venue: Courthouse

Award winning singer/songwriter Michael Brunnock returns to Kells with a very special concert of new songs composed in response to the Decade of Centenaries. Inspired by Roger Casement, Ernie O’Malley and Brunnock's own family stories, exploring the Irish experience from the rising through to the civil war. Winner of an Italian Oscar, the David Di Donatello Award, for his work with David  Byrne, on the Sean Penn movie This Must Be the Place, Michael possesses an extraordinary voice, his powerful melodies and harmonies are driven by a strong personal vision drawing the listener in with an authentic vision and Irish soul. Michael will be joined by some very special guests on the night, blending some of Ireland's top Rock and Trad musicians, making this evening of music & song one not to be missed!

Please note this event is being filmed
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Michael Brunnock & band in concert

Tony Bucher

Taking it to the streets, Californian music of the 1970s

Event  15 
Venue: Courthouse
From gritty street funk to cracker blues to gay disco divas, from street jams to slick arena rock and punk rock, California in the 1970s had it all. Come and enjoy an era highlights reel with a child of the madness that was post-hippie San Francisco. Featuring some of the greatest sounds in American musical history including the Grateful Dead, Santana, the Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
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Tony Bucher

Turtle Bunbury

The Irish Diaspora: Tales of Emigration, Exile and Imperialism

Event  18 
Venue: Courthouse

A whirlwind tour of world history through the eyes of men and women from Ireland, great and otherwise, who have left their indelible mark on global history over the centuries past. As BBC History Magazine put it, Turtle will give people “a new sense of the many ways in which Ireland has interacted with the world beyond its shores, and of some of the extraordinary careers that have resulted.”

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Turtle Bunbury

Fintan O’Toole

We Don't Know Ourselves

Event  21 
Venue: Church of Ireland
We Don't Know Ourselves is a very personal vision of recent Irish history from the year of Fintan O'Toole's birth, 1958, down to the present. Ireland has changed almost out of recognition during those decades, and Fintan O'Toole's life coincides with that arc of transformation. The book is a brilliant interweaving of memories (though this is emphatically not a memoir) and engrossing social and historical narrative. In a review in the Guardian Colm Tóibín described the book as 'Sweeping, authoritative and profoundly intelligent'. Winner of the An Post Irish Book Awards for 2021 and #1 Bestseller.
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Fintan O’Toole

Anthony Summers

The Final Mystery of Marilyn Monroe

Event  29 
Venue: Kells Theatre
With a Netflix documentary and the re-publication of the 1985 Anthony Summers book Goddess: the Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe the troubled Hollywood superstar is back in the news on the 60th anniversary of her still controversial death. Come and hear the man who provided the taped interviews on which the Netflix documentary was based, investigative journalist Anthony Summers. Anthony will be in conversation with Myles Dungan.
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Anthony Summers

A morning with Percy French

Owen Gilhooly-Miles / Niall Kinsella / Myles Dungan

Event  32 
Venue: Headfort House
Percy French began life as the son of an Anglo-Irish landlord shortly after the Great Famine, worked as an inspector of drains but ended his life far more beloved in Ireland than such a background would normally imply. In a career on the concert stage he wrote and sang a string of Irish classics, from ‘The Mountains of Mourne’ to ‘Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff’. He will be celebrated in song in a special event in the glorious Headfort House ballroom by baritone Owen Gilhooly-Miles, accompanied on piano by Niall Kinsella with a script written by Myles Dungan.
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Damien Shiels

Kells Landscapes of Revolution Tour

Event  33 
Venue: Outdoor event

The Landscapes of Revolution Project (www.landscapesofrevolution.com) was established to raise awareness of Ireland’s revolutionary-era archaeology through engagement with local communities. In this special tour, the largely untapped potential of this surviving physical landscape of revolution will be demonstrated by exploring the War of Independence and Civil War in Kells. Participants will also be shown some of the techniques and methodologies the project employs to identify and map these vulnerable sites.

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Damien Shiels

Eileen Dunne

All-Star Gazing: 50 years of the GAA All-Stars

Event  37 
Venue: Kells Theatre
In 1971 four GAA correspondents started floating the idea of a scheme to reward GAA footballers and hurlers for their achievements on the pitch. Mick Dunne, Paddy Downey, John D Hickey and Pádraig Puirséal approached a potential sponsor and with the GAA on board, the first All-Star awards were born.  Mick Dunne was secretary of the scheme for 25 years and a chance discovery in his office five years ago, led daughters Eileen and Moira to write this account of the first 50 years of the All-Stars. Eileen will recount how the scheme has evolved, what the ‘All-Star’ means to today’s players, the missed flights, parties in San Francisco, the Skydome in Toronto and the many friendships and indeed romances that blossomed on the way ...and they are only the stories she is allowed to tell!!
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Eileen Dunne

Declan O’Rourke

The Pawnbroker’s Reward - a narrative of the Great Famine

Event  38 
Venue: Church of Ireland
Declan O’Rourke’s abilities as a singer and a songwriter have never been in doubt. The great Paul Weller has described Declan’s song ‘Galileo’ as the song he most wished he’d written from the past 30 years. Then, in 2021, Declan took a new direction. Long a student of the Great Famine, as evidenced by his 2017 album, Chronicles of the Great Famine,  he went ‘long form’ and his best-selling debut novel The Pawnbroker’s Reward, was the result. It's been described by Joseph O’Connor as ‘a powerful and gripping piece of writing from a born storyteller’ and by Michael Harding as ‘full of powerful strength and compassion’. Declan will be in conversation with Gerry Foley.
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Declan O’Rourke

Deirdre Kinahan

RAGING Three Plays: Seven Years of Warfare in Ireland

Event  39 
Venue: Courthouse
Deirdre Kinahan will read from her award-winning cycle of plays commemorating Ireland’s revolutionary period 1916 to 1923; Wild Sky, Embargo and Outrage. These plays give voice to the extraordinary contribution and experience of the ordinary Irish citizen caught up in the rage of change, particularly women. Deirdre will also discuss her inspiration and process in creating these riveting dramas.
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Deirdre Kinahan