Library to host lectures on Cork

CORK City Library will this weekend host a day of lectures looking back and celebrating the life and times of Cork a century ago.

This year’s Library and Heritage Day is entitled Extraordinary Times and it runs in the City Library on the Grand Parade from 10.30am to 3.30pm on Saturday.

The day’s events begin with ‘I have caught the magic’: Terence MacSwiney and Cork’s theatre world, a lecture by theatre historian Fiona Brennan.

Dr Brennan is the co-editor, alongside Gabriel Doherty and Neil Buttimer, of The Art and Ideology of Terence MacSwiney: Caught in the living flame (2022).

The second lecture of the day, Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times, by Anne Twomey, begins at 11.30am.

Anne Twomey is one of the historians who make up the Shandon Area History Group.

Stair na Síochána in Éirinn, le Risteárd Mac Annraoí, is at 1.30pm, and is followed at 2.30pm by Irish Poetry, Prose and Song of the 1920s by Dr Jonathan Creasy.

City librarian David O’Brien told The Echo he was very much looking forward to this year’s celebration of local history.

“The 2023 Library History and Heritage Day event, Extraordinary Times, builds on the extraordinary interest in local history and heritage that has been a feature of commemorative events in Cork City,” Mr O’Brien said.

“In past years the History Roadshow sparked this interest and this year this special day of lectures by leading authors, academics and local historians continues this tradition.” Entry is free but booking is essential. Email: local_studies@corkcity.ie or phone: 021 4924911. Book on EventBrite.