Cork – Islands, Prisons & Top Ten Disappearances

This week I took a break (more or less) from Blood Runs Green. Instead I spent my week in Cork working on the Spike Island project. I had a bunch of meetings in Cork and then headed to Cobh where I took the boat out to Spike Island.

Cobh from Spike Island

The Spike Island Ferry

There’s a lot of work involved in telling the story of Spike from the monastic settlement of the seventh century, though the building of the Fort Westmorland (now Fort Mitchel) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the transportation of convicts from the island and later when it was used as an internment camp for prisoners during the Irish War of Independence. It’s a complex and fascinating story and the real challenge is to tell the story of the island up to the present so that it also incorporates the more recent history of the island as a military and naval base and a home for many who lived in the houses that surround the fort.

A Dublin Launch – spies, murder & some chat!

My best booksellers!

The final launch of ‘Blood Runs Green’ was held at the City Assembly House, now occupied by the Irish Georgian Society. It’s a wonderful building that the Georgian Society is slowly bringing back to life. This was the launch that meant the most to me as it was back on home turf and it had been quite a while since I’d been home. In many ways the City Assemby House was a very a fitting place to launch the book as it married my interest in Georgian Dublin with my more recent interest in Gilded Age Chicago.

City Assembly House, Dublin

It was wonderful to have so many family and friends there on the evening. There was lots of chat, wine and book sales and by the end of the evening my nephew and nieces had pefected their sales pitch! I realised while I was speaking that I’d begun the research for the book when my youngest niece was born and she’s now six. Conveniently she was standing beside me when I mentioned this so she acted as a perfect unit of measurement.I hope she’s not twelve when the next one comes out!

Lucy as a unit of measurment. Here’s hoping she’s not taller than me by the time the next book comes out!

My Georgian Dublin collaborator and friend Finola O’Kane kindly introduced the event which was fitting as she’s just become the editor of the Journal of the Irish Georgian Society – Irish Archictural and Decorative Studies. Prof Tom Bartlett formally launched the book. It was wonderful to have Tom there as he had supervised my Masters thesis many years ago and we’ve remained good friends ever since.

 

      

After the offical launch many of us repaired to Neary’s, a wonderful late Victorian pub, on Chatham Street – a pub where I’ve spent many, many hours so it was nice to return for a celebratory event.There was plenty of laughter and gossip and chat and sandwiches and cocktail sausages to go around and it was great to have time to catch-up with family and friends.

 

I was also busy during the week with a piece in the Irish Times about Charles Stewart Parnell, a spy and the Cronin murder. And on Sunday evening RTE Radio 1 broadcast and interview I did with Myles Dungan for The History Show.

Next week (for a change of scene) I’m off to Spike Island in Cork Harbour to continue work on the museum that will open there in 2016. Never a dull moment these days!

Grading, celebrating & a drenching

Skerries, post downpour!

It’s exam season again. My days have spent grading exams, invigilating exams, reading dissertations and trying to finalise new modules which will be rolled out in September. I’m putting the final bits and pieces together so that the new Master’s programme I’ve been working on for the last eighteen months will be ready for an eager bunch of students in the autumn. I’m very excited about this new Masters. It’s an MA in Cities, Culture and Creativity and it’s the sort of Masters I would have done had it existed when I graduated.