WHAT’S ON...
Sunday Symposium
Reading History with Tim Pat Coogan, Diarmaid Ferriter, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Senator Eoghan Harris
Chaired by Caiman Jones
Tim Pat Coogan is Ireland's best known historical writer. His first book, Ireland Since The Rising, published in 1966, was a pioneering work, the first history of the fifty years that followed the 1916 Rising. It gave a new generation an insight into the civil war, partition, the emergence and constitutional development of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the unconstitutional development of the IRA. His subsequent book, The IRA, first published in 1970, became the definitive work on the subject and has been reissued in several editions and languages.
His biography of Michael Collins, published on Collin's centenary in 1990, created a remarkable rekindling of interest, on both sides of the Atlantic, in Collins and his times. As a result of Coogan's research another new generation became fascinated not only by the legendary hero and the challenges he faced, but in the relevance of his dealings with the Six Counties to today's events. There followed man acres of newsprint coverage, TV programmes, a film starring Liam Neeson and a popular brand of Irish Whiskey, called after the legendary hero. Coogan's other works include On The Blanket, a study of the dirty protest which preceded the hunger strikes of 1981, a biography of de Valera, Long fellow, long shadow; the first major work on the Irish diaspora, Wherever Green is Worn (2000) and Ireland in the Twentieth Century (2003).
Coogan's career as an author and journalist (he was editor of the Irish Press between 1968 and 1987) has taken him around the world interviewing figures as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Mumar Ghadafi and made him a well known personality on both radio and TV. His memoir was published in 2008.
Diarmaid Ferriter was born in Dublin in 1972 and is one of Ireland’s leading historians. He is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD and has published extensively on twentieth century Irish history. His books include the bestsellers The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (2004) and Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon de Valera (2007), winner of 3 Irish book awards in 2008. His latest book is Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (2009). He is a regular broadcaster with RTE radio and television.
Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, was a student at University College Dublin, a post-graduate at Cambridge University and now lives in London. A historian and prize-winning biographer (the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Victor Gollancz: a biography), her recent non-fiction books include True Brits: inside the Foreign Office, The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843-1993, The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions (shortlisted for the Channel 4 political book prize) and Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the glory days of Fleet Street. In the 1970s Ruth wrote her first book, An Atlas of Irish History, the third edition of which was published in 2005. Patrick Pearse: the triumph of failure, which won the National University of Ireland Prize for Historical Research in 1978, was reissued in 2006 with a new foreword.
Since 1993 Ruth has written seriously and/or frivolously for almost every national newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom and appears frequently on radio and television in Ireland, the UK and on the BBC World Service. Ruth feels both Irish and English and greatly enjoys being part of both cultures. See her essay The Outsider published in Britain and Ireland: Lives Entwined II (British Council, September 2006). The Anglo-Irish Murders, her ninth crime novel, is a satire on the peace process. Her tenth, Carnage on the Committee, was set in literary London, and Murdering Americans, set in the academic world of Indiana, is Ruth's latest. Read her article Making Fun of Academics, published in the Mystery Readers Journal. Three times a bridesmaid, Ruth has been shortlisted by the Crime Writers' Association for the John Creasey Award for the best first novel and twice for the Last Laugh award for the funniest crime novel of the year — Murdering Americans won the Last Laugh award at CrimeFest, Bristol, 2008.
Eoghan Harris, a native of Cork City, combines the careers of television producer, playright, screenwriter, Senator and sometime spindoctor (Mary Robinson’s Presidential campaign) His RTE programmes won three Jacobs Awards, and a film documenatry Darkness Visible, won a Prix Futura award at the Berlin Festival, 1988.
Eoghan has also written two produced stage plays dealing with the history of southern protestantism: Souper Sullivan, performed at the Abbey Theatre, for the Dublin Theatre Festival 1986. and The Pope’s Gig, performed at the Edinburgh Festival, 1984.
He is also the author of the popular Sharpe series for Carlton Television. He teaches at the National Film School, Dun Laoghaire, and writes a weekly political column for the Sunday Independent.
