Events
Published in Editorial, Issue 4 (July/August 2016), Volume 24JULY
02 Sat 11am
Chester Beatty Library atrium, Dublin Castle.
Intercultural tour with community ambassador: Mandarin language tour, Vicky Wang.
03 Sun 12 noon
County Kildare Archaeological Society, Celbridge.
Visit to Celbridge Lodge & Kildrought House, Henry McDowell & June Stuart.
€10 (entrance fee & tea).
06 Wed 1pm
Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast.
The Battle of the Somme: three armies at war, 1916, Timothy Bowman.
Booking: www.nmni.com/1916.
07 Thur 10am–12 noon
National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Sq.
July pictures clinic. Curators appraise paintings, prints and drawings brought into the Gallery by the public.
07 Thur 7pm
Casino, Marino, Dublin 3.
Patrick Pearse and the revolutionary landscape of St Enda’s, Brian Crowley.
Booking: casinomarino@opw.ie.
07 Thur 7pm
Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast.
Screening of The Battle of the Somme + talk, Philip Orr.
Booking: www.nmni.com/1916.
09 Sat 11am
Chester Beatty Library atrium, Dublin Castle.
Intercultural tour with community ambassador: Irish language tour, Jack FitzGerald.
10 Sun
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Sea Breeze’ steam train excursion: Dublin–Rosslare & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
14 Thur 1.10pm
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.
In-focus tour: Lapis and gold: the story of the Ruzbihan Qur’an, Elaine Wright.
16 Sat 12 noon–2pm
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.
Talk & display: The art of Arabic calligraphy, Mustafa Ja’far.
16 Sat 2.30pm
Western Front Association (Dublin Branch), lecture theatre, NMI Collins Barracks.
Initiation by gas: 16th (Irish) Division at Loos, April 1916, Carole Hope.
€3 donation.
23 Sat
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Portrush Flyer’ steam train excursion: Belfast–Portrush & return; Portrush–Coleraine & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
24 Sun
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘The Boyne’ steam train excursion: Dublin–Drogheda & return; Drogheda–Dundalk & return; Drogheda–Skerries & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
24 Sun 2pm
Chester Beatty Library atrium, Dublin Castle.
Intercultural tour with community ambassador: Japanese language tour, Hiromi Anzai.
27 Wed 2pm
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.
Film screening: After ’16 (short films).
28 Thur 1.10pm
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.
The triumph of colour: the Islamic architecture of Iran, Bernard O’Kane.
AUGUST
03 Wed 1pm
Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast.
War, risings and rebellions beyond Ireland: the strategic context of 1916, David Murphy.
Booking: www.nmni.com/1916.
06 Sat
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Portrush Flyer’ steam train excursion: Belfast–Portrush & return; Portrush–Coleraine & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
06 Sat 11am
Chester Beatty Library atrium, Dublin Castle.
Intercultural tour with community ambassador: Mandarin language tour, Vicky Wang.
07 Sun
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Dublin Riviera’ steam train excursions: Dublin–Greystones & return (x2).
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
11 Thur 7pm
Casino, Marino, Dublin 3.
Modernising the Rising: re-thinking the 1916 Rebellion, Luke Gibbons.
Booking: casinomarino@opw.ie.
13 Sat 1.10pm
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.
In-focus tour: Lapis and gold: the story of the Ruzbihan Qur’an, Elaine Wright.
15–19 Mon–Fri 8pm
Rathmichael Historical Society Summer Lecture Series, Rathmichael School, Stonebridge Road, Shankill.
Chris Corlett (on medieval Rathdown), David McIlreavy, Pat Wallace and Conor McDermott (on the recent Glendalough excavations).
20 Sat
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Portrush Flyer’ steam train excursion: Belfast–Portrush & return; Portrush–Coleraine & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
20 Sat 3pm
Bray Cualann Historical Society, St Peter’s Cemetery, Little Bray (finishing at Bray Railway Station).
Walking tour: Bray 1916–1921, Brian White.
21 Sun
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Marble City’ steam train excursion: Dublin–Kilkenny & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
22 Mon 11am
Bray Cualann Historical Society, St Peter’s Cemetery, Little Bray (finishing at Bray Railway Station).
Walking tour: Bray 1916–1921, Brian White.
23 Tues 6pm
Old Dublin Society, Dublin City Library & Archive, 138–144 Pearse St.
From Meath of the pastures to Smithfield: the story of Smithfield and a family who lived there, Mary O’Connell.
24 Wed 7pm
Dún Laoghaire Borough Historical Society, Dalkey RC Church car park.
Walking tour: Dalkey village and coastal walk, Alice Cullen.
25 Thur 1pm
National Museum of Ireland, Kildare St.
Mapping and protecting the shipwrecks of the First World War in Irish waters, Karl Brady & Charise McKeon.
Reservations: +353 (0)1 6486334, educationarch@museum.ie.
25 Thur 1.10pm
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle.
‘It was all a great adventure’: conserving the collection of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, Cécilia Duminuco.
27 Sat
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
‘Portrush Flyer’ steam train excursion: Belfast–Portrush & return; Portrush–Coleraine & return.
Details: www.steamtrainsireland.com.
27 Sat 2pm
Bray Cualann Historical Society, Library, Eglinton Road.
Bray events, 20–28 August 1916, James Scannell.
28 Sun 2pm
Chester Beatty Library atrium, Dublin Castle.
Intercultural tour with community ambassador: Arabic language tour, Karma El Shawa.
28 Sun 3pm
Chester Beatty Library atrium, Dublin Castle.
Intercultural tour with community ambassador: Japanese language tour, Hiromi Anzai.
28 Sun 3pm
County Kildare Archaeological Society, Fen car park.
Guided tour of Pollardstown fen, Michael Jacob & Brian McCabe.
Directions: www.kildarearchsoc.ie.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.