Cork World Book Fest – Thurs, 22 April, 5.00pm

On Thursday at 5.00pm I’ll be chatting to Danielle O’Donovan about writing The Darkness Echoing: Exploring Ireland’s Places of Famine, Death & Rebellion as part of Cork World Book Fest. We’ll be talking about Dark Tourism and the Irish tendency to focus on the bleak and miserable aspects of our past. Why do we love going to prison museums and graveyards as part of a ‘fun’ day out? Why do we talk about death and funerals as easily as we talk about the weather?

As part of my research for The Darkness Echoing I visited over 200 museums and historic sites across Ireland. I’ll also chat to Danielle about some of the well-known (and not so well-known) sites so you can get planning trips just as soon as that’s allowed!

The talk is free and open to all but you need to register to attend. Click here to register: Cork World Book Fest Event

Five Rules of Writing

Recording The Five Rules of Writing Podcast with Ed Needham

I’m often asked about what I write, but very rarely asked about how I write. So, I was delighted to be asked to be a guest on ‘The Five Rules of Writing’ podcast.

I got to talk about why I feel more at home in mud cabins than I do in castles, about how difficult I found it to put myself in the story and why Twitter has stunted our ability to debate issues in a nuanced and balanced way.

If you want to hear what it’s like to write a book this may be the podcast for you! As a sneak preview here are my Five Rules:

1. Take the topic, but not yourself, seriously
2. Have a sense of place
3. Follow the brown signs
4. Balance synthesis with originality
5. Embrace contradictions

The podcast can be listened to here: The Five Rules of Writing

For anyone who is thinking about buying The Darkness Echoing John Gibney gave the book a glowing review in History Ireland. He wrote that the book

“is provocative without being polemical. O’Brien is unafraid to offer both laconic asides and trenchant critiques, but as she writes as both a practitioner of public history and an academic her book has a refreshingly open-minded tone that offers historical complexity without hectoring. She has tried to do something different and has succeeded admirably; in doing so she has written as significant a commentary on Irish history as any that has appeared in recent years. The Darkness Echoing is a hugely enjoyable, thought-provoking and informative work; for anyone involved in Irish history or heritage it is an essential read.”

The Darkness Echoing

The Darkness Echoing was published on 1 October.

I don’t recommend publishing a book in the midst of a global pandemic. While it’s great to see the finished book (and the publishers have done a wonderful job both in terms of design, but also in terms of promoting it) there is something a little bit sad about doing all the promotion at a remove. I miss the chat and the craic and the debates and the conversations that usually come with a new publication.

One of the things I wanted to do with The Darkness Echoing was to spark conversations about how we learn about the past – both formally and informally. I want to open up discussions about our museums, our heritage, our school curriculum, government funding and support (or lack thereof) of our heritage. I’m sure those conversations, discussions, disagreements will happen in time…but it would have been nice to begin them now. There is no time like the present to talk about the past!

I have largely migrated all my research and writing information over to a new website: www.gillianobrien.net where there are lots of photos of the sites I visited on my travels around Ireland and lots more information about the book (and other things that I’m currently working on).

And the book can be bought in all good bookshops! I’m a fan of the independent bookshop, but a sales a sale so buy wherever takes your fancy.

If you’re in Ireland the cheapest out there at the moment is Kenny’s in Galway

And in the UK the new bookshop.org.uk will send it on its merry way.

And while it’s not published yet in the US Blackwell’s will post it from the UK to the US for free!

Musings on Public History

A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to win an ‘Impact Award’ for ‘delivering research which has a demonstrable impact on society, culture and people’. The award was for my Public History work, and specifically for several museum and heritage projects I’ve been involved with.

The award, alongside Andrew Adonis’ ill-informed comments implying that academics luxuriate in a three month summer holiday (if only!) set me thinking about why I got involved with Public History. The ever-present REF is certainly one reason. For academics in the UK the REF has ensured that we all think a lot about impact and engagement. In addition to teaching, researching, grading, administering and writing, we are now supposed to be actively involved in public engagement and have a meaningful and (most importantly) measurable impact on society. It’s a tall order (and doesn’t leave much time for swanning around during the summer ‘break’!)

Public History is a very vague term, and one that has been subject to much debate. Robert Weible has concluded that ‘the discipline’s practitioners are educators who neither deny their expertise nor keep it to themselves’ . That, combined with Lucy Worsley’s take on it which is ‘if history is “finding what happened in the past”, then, public history is “telling lots of people about it”’ seems a pretty good definition to me.