WEST Cork connections to the Hollywood film Pressure will be highlighted at readings by a relative of the real leading lady, Kay Summersby.

The readings by Tamasin MacCarthy Morrogh – whose relative Kay Summersby, née Kathleen MacCarthy Morrogh of Inish Beg Estate in Skibbereen, was believed to be in a relationship with Eisenhower – will be held in tandem with its general release.

Much has been written about the couple’s relationship but the movie – starring Andrew Scott as meteorologist James Stagg, Brendan Fraser as Dwight D Eisenhower, and Kerry Condon as Kay Summersby – focuses on the plans for the Normandy landings during World War II.

Tamasin MacCarthy Morrogh will be giving readings from a book by Kay Summersby, née Kathleen MacCarthy Morrogh of Inish Beg Estate in Skibbereen, who was in a relationship with Eisenhower.
Photo: CP Kelleher.

The D-Day drama sees Oscar-nominated Condon act both as confidant to the general and mediator between battling factions on his staff.

Born in Cork on November 23rd 1908, Kathleen moved to London as a young woman and, in 1936, married Gordon Thomas Summersby whose name she kept after they divorced in 1942.

She drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz before being assigned to work with Eisenhower.

With his help, she became a captain in the US Women’s Army Corps and, after the war, an American citizen.

She was awarded the British Empire Medal for her service during the conflict at the insistence of Winston Churchill.

Kerry Condon plays Kay Summersby in the movie Pressure.

As the first in a series of five talks, Tamasin said: ‘The focus on this occasion will be on Kay’s bestseller, Eisenhower was my Boss, because it has more to do with the Normandy landings. Later on, I will be reading from Kay’s memoir, Past Forgetting.’

These readings are part of a research project entitled DNAtured – A Trilogy in which Tamasin explores three, historically significant women who share her family’s DNA and whose achievements were white-washed out of history.

Tamasin looks at Kay Summersby, the Irish Independence fighter Muriel Murphy MacSwiney, and the fascinating De Morfi women and their relationships with King Louis XV.

For De Morfi one can read the name Mademoiselle Marie-Louise O’Murphy, a model who was the petites maîtresses of King Louis XV, but​ details of that will be saved for future readings.

Starting with Kay Summersby, who was actually born in Schull but brought up at Inish Beg, it is clear that her WWII and peace-time contributions were actively downplayed by the pentagon, the media, and the White House, in order to protect General Eisenhower’s reputation because their suspected affair would have cost him the presidency.

The drama of it all is not lost on Tamasin, who is a trained actor but due to a life-threatening road accident at the start of her career chose the more secure path of teaching. It was as a planned return to acting that Tamasin had initially hoped to do a stage play about Kay.

As one of numerous instances that can only be described as serendipity, Tamasin explained that while talking to Nicola Smyth at the Antiquity Book Shop and Café​, she realised that a book about Muriel Murphy MacSwiney called History’s Daughter was staring at her from the shelf.

‘When I pointed it out to Nicola, she laughed and said she’d only put the book written by Muriel’s daughter, Máire MacSwiney Brugha, there the night before.’

It was serendipity too when she bought a book from Cammy Harley of Bantry Bookshop called Extraordinary, Ordinary Women by Karen Minihan.

‘Cammy told me that Karen brought historical Cork women to life. This encouraged me to keep going, but I pivoted and decided to share my research journey, beginning with Kay’s memoirs, at readings instead.’

All of this began in early 2025 when Tamasin was idly reading history books she’d found in the family library.

‘I tend to have four or five books open at any one time and one of them was Michael MacCarthy Morrogh’s book, The Irish Century, which had a foreword by the writer and director Neil Jordan.

‘You couldn’t write it, but a close friend, who had no idea what I was reading, suggested we go to Neil Jordan’s reading at the West Cork Literary Festival. And it was there he signed a copy of Michael’s book for my father.’

Meanwhile, in the book she was reading, Michael was writing about a family friend, Elizabeth Bowen, author of The Last September. Two guesses who, while still a student at Manchester Met University​, was cast in a movie of the same name? Tamasin.

‘I used to visit Inish Beg and Uncle Séamus often,’ Tamasin told The Southern Star. ‘And when Kay died, Séamus scattered her ashes on the estate. My last time at Inish Beg, before it was sold, was at uncle Séamus’s wake.’

Tamasin will read from Kay’s own New York Times bestseller at 6.30pm on Wednesday September 16th at Bantry Bookshop, and at 6.30pm on Friday September 18th at Skibbereen’s Antiquity Bookshop and Café.

Pressure opened in cinemas in Bantry and Clonakilty on Wednesday night.