Digging Up Our Deeper Roots

Cool Gunnings… SAT20SEPT25

his year’s Festival Of History shaped up to be one of the finest when it comes to unearthing Greystones’ long and winding past.

Put together by George Jones and the La Touche Legacy gang, this was their 35th weekend of archive digging.

Taking place on September 19th and 20th at the Greystones Golf Club, there were some heavy hitters headlining this year, including former Gay Byrne and Pat Kenny producer at RTE, Julie Parsons, who presented From Portland Road To The Pacific Ocean: The Life & Death of Dr Andy Parson.

Here’s the line-up for the shindig also known as The 10th Festival Of History…

Professor Mary E Daly
Mary Daly MRIA is professor emeritus of Irish history at University College Dublin. She has held teaching positions at Harvard and Boston College, and in 2014 became the first woman president of the Royal Irish Academy. Her many publications include Dublin, The Deposed Capital (1984), Women and Work in Ireland (1997) and The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973 (2006). Her current project is a study of an Irish provincial town in the 1930s.

Eamon Delaney
Eamon Delaney is an author and commentator. A former editor of Magill magazine, he is currently a columnist on The Times Irish edition. His publications include An Accidental Diplomat: My Years in the Irish Foreign Service (2001) and Breaking the Mould: a Story of Art and Ireland (2009). He is director of The Lion and the Shamrock project, which is focused on history in the community and adult education and offers talks, tours, and research.

Dr Chris Lawlor
Chris Lawlor is former head of the history department at Méanscoil Iognóid Rís, Naas. He is a member of the West Wicklow Historical Society committee and co-editor of the society’s biennial journal and is also a member of Dunlavin Writers Group. He is the author of eleven books and numerous articles on Irish and local history, and his most recent publication, Robert Barton: A Remarkable Revolutionary, was published by The History Press in 2024.

Dr Cormac Moore
Cormac Moore is an historian-in-residence with Dublin City Council and a columnist with The Irish News. His publications include The GAA v Douglas Hyde (2012), The Irish Soccer Split (2015), Birth of the Border (2019), and most recently, The Irish Boundary Commission (2025) and The Irish Revolution: Laois (2025). He is currently chairperson of Greystones Archaeological and Historical Society.

The Parsons at Dromore 1930s

Julie Parsons
Julie Parsons was a radio and television producer with RTE before becoming a best-selling author. Her first novel, Mary, Mary, appeared in 1998. A critical and commercial success, it was translated into seventeen languages, and was followed by a few other successful novels, among them The Guilty Heart, The Hourglass and The Therapy House, which won the Crime Fiction Book of the Year at the 2017 Irish Book Awards. Julie has ancestral links to Greystones – the Parsons family lived at Dromore on Portland Road, and her father, Dr Andy Parsons (1914-1955), grew up in the town. Julie has recently been delving into his story and the history of her Parsons family, and will be sharing her discoveries at our festival.

Dr Sorcha O’Brien
Based at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dr O’Brien’s research focusses on the critical analysis of design and technology history in Ireland. She curated the 2019-2020 Kitchen Power exhibition in the National Museum of Ireland, which examined the impact on women of rural electrification. Her publications include Powering the Nation: Images of the Shannon Scheme and the Electrification of Ireland (2017) and Kitchen Power: Women’s Experiences of Rural Electrification (forthcoming).

We got a few words before the closing dinner from Mr Jones… “Wonderful talks. Great community participation, and delighted to have yet another very successful festival.”

The lad’s a poet. And he don’t even know it.

Big thanks, as always, to John McGowan, for catching the weekend. Come for the history, stay for the Aardman gallery of rogues.

You can find out more about the La Touche Legacy and their Festivals of History here agus here.

Full gallery of McGowan pics right about here, in hi-res and free to download.