Speaking Ill of the Dead – Afternoon Ticket

Where history meets the ‘phillipic’ and historians get a chance to visit reasoned and merited opprobrium on influential historical figures who, they believe, had far too much influence on history. Yes, it amounts to dancing on someone’s grave, but they have it coming!

Entry to the following events:

2.30pm – Paul Rouse

UCD historian Paul Rouse has made a particular study of the political and social impact of sport on Irish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is also a director of the Century Ireland project and editor of www.historyhub. ie. Before he became an academic historian, Paul worked as a researcher on the RTÉ Prime Time Investigates series. He is co-author with Mike Cronin and Mark Duncan of The GAA: A People’s History. As his contribution to Speaking Ill of the Dead Paul will be examining the life of one of the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Founding Fathers, Michael Cusack, who was himself an excellent athlete, but perhaps not such a good role model…

3.05pm – Catriona Crowe

Catriona bade farewell to the National Archives of Ireland after an illustrious career there that included the realisation of a dream, the digitising of the 1901 and 1911 census, which allowed anyone with a computer and an internet connection to become an amateur genealogist. Although best known as manager of the Irish Census Online project Catriona is also a member of the editorial team of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and editor of Dublin 1911 and was recently the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick. She takes on Edward Carson – barrister, cabinet minister, unionist leader who began his public life as prosecutorial tormenter of Parnellites in the 1880s and became Oscar Wilde’s nemesis before leading the unionist opposition to Home Rule from 1912.

3.40pm – Diarmaid Ferriter

Occupant of the prestigious post of Professor of Modern Irish History at University College, Dublin, Diarmaid Ferriter is also a prolific author and ‘go-to’ historian for many radio and TV programmes. His first significant success was The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 and his biographical study of Eamon de Valera, Judging Dev quickly followed. His most recent work, which deals with the revolutionary generation, is A Nation and not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–1923. Such is his energy and productivity that a history blogger located not a million miles from Hinterland suggested recently that there were, in fact, two Diarmaid Ferriters. In Speaking Ill of the Dead Diarmaid will be damning Archbishop John Charles McQuaid with very faint praise indeed. Whether as President of Blackrock College or Archbishop of Dublin, McQuaid wielded pen and crozier in the service of the Roman Catholic Church and 19th century values…

4.15pm – Peter Frankopan

Peter Frankopan, author of best-seller The Silk Roads, is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He speaks ill of Bohemond I of Antioch – leader of the First Crusade, who was, literally, a bastard. His involvement in the First Crusade probably had less to do with regaining the Holy Land for Christianity than with gaining some less holy land for Bohemond.