This important book tells the extraordinary tale of a true-life Wonder Woman: Damian Corless reviews Helena Molony A Radical Life in the Irish Indo

A cracking review in the Irish Indo July 9th by Damian Corless

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/political-agitator-actress-and-guntoting-feminist-35903694.html

“A new book delves into the life of Helena Molony, a bundle of contradictions who Maud Gonne hailed as ‘the most gallant and bravest’.

This important book tells the extraordinary tale of a true-life Wonder Woman who popped up again and again at pivotal points in the making of modern Ireland, a sort of Zelig with a cause.

Biographer Nell Regan has done a major service by piecing together the jigsaw of a dazzling life that featured more Byzantine twists and turns than that Hollywood bamboozler The Usual Suspects.”

Irish Times and Dublin Review of Books reviews of Helena Molony A Radical Life by Catriona Crowe and Pádraig Yeates

There is a considered and lengthy review of Helena Molony: A Radical Life, 1883-1967 by Pádraig Yeates  in  July’s Dublin Review of Books.

See http://www.drb.ie/essays/selfless-radical

  ” a book that has done more to rehabilitate its subject than anything else written over the past half-century.”
” There is no one better qualified to write her life than Nell Regan, who published what Senia Pašeta has described as “a pioneering biographical essay on Molony” in 2001. That was the fruit of a decade’s intermittent research and meant, crucially, that, in Nell’s own words, “I was lucky enough to be doing my initial research at a time when there were still people alive who had known her”, such as Francis Stuart, Louie Coghlan O’Brien and Finian Czira. She was writing about someone who was the proverbial handshake away and a poet’s insight made that link all the more palpable.”

In May, following on from the launch at Liberty Hall, there was a substantial review by Catriona Crowe in the Books section of the Irish Times,

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/helena-molony-a-radical-life-review-fleshing-out-a-complicated-woman-1.3082767

“This first biography of Molony fleshes out our knowledge of this complicated woman and joins a number of other biographies of women activists during these years whose lives are being excavated by a new generation of historians of Irish women, building on the pioneering work of Margaret Ward’s Unmanageable Revolutionaries and Mary Jones’s These Obstreperous Lassies, published in 1983 and 1988. The decade of centenaries has brought a welcome focus on women involved in feminism, nationalism, militarism, pacifism and socialism during the period.”

Podcast of Sunday Miscellany, RTE Radio 1, 30 April 2017

Delighted to have a piece in this broadcast about the first commemoration of Easter 1916. Great timing as it was also the weekend of the launch of Helena Molony: A Radical Life in Liberty Hall.

You can listen to the podcast here

https://www.rte.ie/radio1/sunday-miscellany/programmes/2017/0430/871473-sunday-miscellany-sunday-30-april-2017/?clipid=2472988#2472988

 

free Féile Londubh reading with James Mahon, Fri 28th April

Really looking forward to reading in Ashford, Co Wicklow with James Mahon on flute and uileann pipes.  Launch of Féile Londubh, free and all welcome this Friday!

 

Feile Londubh Launch: Poetry Reading & Music Tickets, Fri, 28 Apr …

https://www.eventbrite.ie › Things to do in Ashford › Performance › Community

Eventbrite – Alchemy Music presents Feile Londubh Launch: Poetry Reading & Music – Friday, 28 April 2017 at Ashford Heritage Centre, Ashford, County 

Launch @ 3pm, 28 April 2017, Liberty Hall of Helena Molony: A Radical Life!

All welcome – come along on 3pm, 28 April to Liberty Hall to launch Helena Molony A Radical Life 1883-1967 off into the world.

 

Delighted that it is taking place in Liberty Hall 100 years on from the date Molony, Rosie Hackett & others marked the first anniversary of the Rising so dramatically. Her name seems to be cropping up all over the place this month between One City One book Echoland and the 1917 Rising anniversary.

Ennis Book Festival

Lovely to be in Ennis last month, reading with Sarah Clancy and in conversation with Carol Drinkwater. Great atmosphere and programme. http://www.ennisbookclubfestival.com/2017-events/2017-programme

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