'A Night to Remember' with Kilkenny Archaeological Society

Kilkenny Archaeological Society are inviting Irish history lovers to a lecture on a pivotal moment for the arts and crafts movement in Kilkenny. 

The lecture, 'A Night to Remember: Standish O'Grady and the 1902 staging of Hugh Roe O'Donnell in Kilkenny', will discuss different aspects of the life of Irish author, journalist and historian Standish O'Grady; his family background, his career as scholar and churchman, his achievements and disappointments, and his legacy to later generations.

The lecture will be given by historian Angus Mitchell on Thursday, March 27 at 8pm in Rothe House. Tickets are now on sale at €8 for members of Kilkenny Archaeological Society and €10 for non-members. 

In 1902, Irish author Standish O'Grady wrote and performed in a three-hour masque about Ireland's much-mythologised Elizabethan clan chief, Hugh Roe O'Donnell.

It was performed in the grounds of a house a few miles south of Kilkenny by the Neophytes, a youth theatre group from Belfast under the direction of the Belfast antiquarian, Francis Joseph Bigger. 

By piecing together recently-discovered photographs taken of the production, this illustrated lecture will argue that this extravagant staging in the open air might be claimed as a point of departure for the arts and crafts movement in Kilkenny, as well as an experimental juncture in the early history of Irish cinema.

Guest lecturer Angus Mitchell is known for his scholarship on the humanitarian activism of Roger Casement and Alice Stopford Green. His edition of The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement was recently adapted into an award-winning film Secrets from Putumayo.

His articles have been published in Irish Historical Studies, Field Day Review, Women's History Review and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. He is a regular contributor to History Ireland and published an article in the Old Kilkenny Journal.