A new Australian play about Irish forebears and failure. Continue reading
Posted in June 2015 …
Four centuries of O’Neills and an unmarked grave in Perth.
Vanessa O’Neill’s play, In Search of Owen Roe O’Neill (see What’s On for details) on her great grandfather, Owen Roe O’Neill (no, not the c17 hero, but he does get a guernsey) opens at La Mama on 24 June for a two-week season. Continue reading
Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland by Anne Cadwallader
Using previously confidential police reports, British declassified documents and eye-witness accounts, the book establishes beyond any doubt that London colluded in the murders of more than 120 Catholic civilians in Ireland.
The Swans of Lough Erne
On a windswept rugged mountainside in South West Donegal, three Melbourne cousins recently climbed the mountain to honour their grandfather, who lost his life seventy years earlier in the crash of an RAF Sunderland flying boat, whilst embarking on a mission patrolling for U-boats in the North Atlantic. Continue reading
Waywords and Meansigns: new ways into ‘Finnegans Wake’
‘What’s all this talk about ‘Ulysses’?…’Finnegans Wake’ is the important book.’ – Nora Joyce, 1941. Continue reading
Dáibhí de Barra and the Scribal Tradition
Dáibhí de Barra was the scribe of an Irish manuscript prayer book which he copied in 1833 and which is now held in the State Library of Victoria (MS 10595). The prayer book contains a litany in which, unusually, the Munster saints Finbarr, Olan and Mochuda (St Carthage) are invoked. Continue reading
Unsettling Convict Narrative
It was with some trepidation that I approached this book given the title…. However, I found freshness in Tully’s writing style that took the edge off the relentless misery. Continue reading
How did Joyce get entangled with Charlie Chaplin?
What if Chaplin and Joyce, an inveterate consumer of cinema, had met by chance in Paris, and Chaplin had taken it into his head to make a silent film of ‘Ulysses’? Continue reading
Remembering Mochuda and the Saints of Ireland
On Sunday 24 May 2015, a presentation took place at the church of St Carthage, Parkville, celebrating the memory of its patron saint, on the occasion of its eightieth anniversary. The presentation, by Constant Mews, Chris Watson and Miriam Uí Dhonnabhain, assisted by Siún Uí Mhaoldomhnaigh, Val Noone and Maryna Mews, was designed to tell the dramatic story of the life of St Carthage, within the context of different types of Irish saint, and explore the way he has been remembered across the centuries. Continue reading
Light on the Horizon
Perhaps without knowing it, Dan O’Riordan tells the story of his redemption as a tribute to Australia and the powerful connection that exists between our two nations. Continue reading
Tinteán 