The Revelation of Ireland, Diarmaid Ferriter in conversation with Justine McCarthy, Thursday, 10th October at 8pm, Nenagh Arts Centre, Tickets €20
Diarmaid Ferriter’s new book The Revelation of Ireland demonstrates how we live in a very different country now to the one it was in the mid-1990s. Dramatic economic, social and cultural changes, including the Celtic Tiger boom and increasingly secular debate about abortion, the status of women and same-sex marriage underlined the scale of the transformation.
The new diversity of the population and literary and musical prowess also revealed a country experiencing rapid alteration. The end of the conflict in Northern Ireland culminated in the first visit to the Republic of Ireland of a reigning British monarch in 100 years. Explosive revelations destroyed the credibility of the Catholic Church. And after the 2008 financial crash, Ireland rebounded and rebuilt to great success, but remained plagued by health and housing failures.
Diarmaid Ferriter is one of Ireland’s best-known historians and is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. His books include The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon de Valera and Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland. His most recent book is The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics. He is a regular broadcaster on television and radio and a weekly columnist with The Irish Times.
Justine McCarthy is a columnist with The Irish Times, an author and public speaker. She has won 15 awards for her journalism, including the Broadsheet Columnist of the Year three times. Her book titles are Mary McAleese, The Outsider (1999); Deep Deception: Scandals in Irish Swimming (2009); and An Eye an Ireland: New and Selected Journalism (2023). She was the first woman to deliver the annual Michael Collins-Arthur Griffith oration at Glasnevin Cemetery and is a former adjunct professor of journalism at University of Limerick.