BY JACKIE KEOGH

THE theme for this year’s West Cork History Festival from August 7th to 9th at Inish Beg, near Baltimore, will be Boundaries: setting them and crossing them.  Organisers Simon and Victoria Kingston revealed that the festival will be opened by Taoiseac, Micheál Martin. They also revealed that since 2017 3,000 attendees have heard from 150 speakers, with a further 65,000 people viewing the festival online via its website and YouTube channel. Victoria told The Southern Star: ‘The West Cork History Festival has established itself as a part of the cultural programme of the county and the country.

‘The festival thinks broadly, believing in the intelligence and curiosity of the West Cork audience and has covered topics ranging from local archaeology to polar exploration, and from the earliest times to contemporary events. ‘It places Irish experience alongside wider European and global histories. It has featured eminent academics, but also journalists, artists, diplomats, and others. It has included many speakers from Northern Ireland, whose voices are still heard too rarely in the South. Fantastic field trips have also taken people on foot, bike, and kayak to explore our heritage first-hand.’

The festival opens at 3pm on the Friday afternoon with writer and political commentator Iain Dale, who has recently edited a collection of profiles of the Taoisigh, interviewing three contributors to that book. The panel will include Gary Murphy, who wrote about Charles Haughey, Deirdre Foley, who wrote about Liam Cosgrave, and Stephen Collins, who has written a book about Jack Lynch. Later that day Paddy McGuinness and Professor Ben Tonra will be discussing Irish defence and security policy from both an historical and contemporary context. The Saturday programme opens with Cormac Moore addressing the Irish Boundary Commission, followed with Lewis Baston speaking on the subject of his book Borderlines: A History of Europe in 29 Borders. Also, on Saturday, Sam McBride will be in conversation with Mark Hennessy about his book For and Against a United Ireland, which he co-authored with Fintan O’Toole.

Alexander Morrison will be discussing ‘Beyond the “Great Game’ - boundaries and border-making in the Russian conquest of Central Asia’. And audience members will also get to hear Beatrice Penati on ‘Divide and Rule? How the Soviet stans got their borders’. Gabriel Cooney speaking about Crossing the boundaries between life and death in prehistory drawing on aspects of his book Death in Irish prehistory, while Zoe Reid, keeper of manuscripts at the National Archives, will be speaking about the publication of 1926 census, the first in the Irish Free State. Historian and Union Hall resident, Oscar Kelly, will be giving a presentation on his research about the founding of Castletownshend and Glenbarrahane, a settlement which predated Castletownshend and was forgotten. Historian Myles Dungan, will be returning to the West Cork History Festival to talk about his forthcoming book The Waterboys: triumph, tragedy and the two Irishmen who created California.

The final two speakers scheduled for Saturday’s programme include Rachel Barrett of the London Archives on Irish Paupers in London in the 19th century, and Éimear O’Connor - Well, I Never! Biography, Bravado, and Meeting Seán Keating, which will link to Eimear’s work on the installation Sit, Stand, Smoke and will be available to experience at the festival. Three fascinating films on aspects of West Cork’s history will be screened on Saturday night - Seamus Murphy, Sculptor, in West Cork, Placenames and their Amazing Stories, and Echoes of Faith: The Holy Wells of West Cork with Amanda Clarke. One to watch out for on Sunday is the event marking the 300th anniversary of the publication of Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, with Hester Grant and Adam Tomkins addressing very different aspects of Jonathan Swift’s life. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, authors of Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women should find an enthusiastic audience
too.