Unique Robert Ballagh Moore Street Print; You Are Never Alone With A Book: Walking with my Mother

The Road to Cork: The Power of X: Sea... Time to say Yes to Palestinian State:...

Unique Robert Ballagh Moore Street Print; You Are Never Alone With A Book: Walking with my Mother

Unique RobertBallagh Moore Street Print

As regular readers ofthis column know I have been involved for a very long time in the campaign toprotect and develop as a historic and cultural quarter the Moore St. Terraceand its environs in Dublin. The entire terrace 10-25 Moore Street was occupiedby the evacuated GPO garrison at the end of Easter Week 1916. The developer -Hammerson - wants to demolish much of the terrace.

The Moore St.Preservation Trust, with the support of relatives of the 1916 leaders, isworking with a legal team to prepare a legal challenge should An Bord Pleanáladecide to grant Hammerson permission to knock down any part of this historicterrace. All of this will involve significant costs. As part of the Trust’scampaign to raise awareness, and to raise funding for any legal challenge, theMoore Street Preservation Trust will tonight be launching a new image ofthe last meeting of the Provisional Government following the Easter Rising in1916 by the renowned Irish artist Robert Ballagh. The launch and presentationof the print will take place in the Mansion House in Dublin at 7pm.

This exclusive limitededition of 200 prints (60 by 60 cm) is individually signed and numbered byRobert Ballagh on museum quality paper and printed with archival inks.

The scene depicted inhis painting captures the last meeting of the Provisional Government that tookplace in Number 16 Moore Street following their retreat from the burning GPO.It was there at this meeting attended by Pádraig Pearse, Seán Mac Diarmada,Joseph Plunkett, Tom Clarke and a wounded James Connolly that the decision wastaken to surrender to the British forces. Also present at the meeting wereVolunteers Winifred Carney, Julia Grennan and Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell who a shorttime later accompanied Pearse when he presented the notice of surrender to theBritish. The women of 1916 are rarely given their proper place in thatstory. Robert Ballagh’s print redresses this through the inclusion of thesethree republican activists who played a central role in those historic events.

This striking newprint entitled simply ‘HQ Moore Street 1916’ is being released for sale at Euro150 or £150 per print. Each signed print is sure to become a valuablecollector’s piece. The print will be available this evening followingthe launch at the Mansion House. It can be purchased through www.arasuichonghaile.com/moorestreet

I have my copyordered. I am confident that these unique prints by Bobby will go quickly.

You Are NeverAlone With A Book.

I’m glad to sayI finished reading a few books over the last month so I will update you on themover the next couple of weeks.

First off is TheGhost Limb by Claire Mitchell. This is an intriguing read and Ms Mitchell is apersuasive writer, gentle, witty and positive. She describes herself as analternative Protestant and Ghost Limb has a sub-title ‘Alternative Protestantsand the Spirit of 1798’. In this compelling book a group of thesecitizens retrace the steps of the United Irishmen - and women- who worked forthe unity of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter over two hundred years ago as ameans to end the connection with England.

They trek acrossgraveyards and old churches, pubs and battlefield sites in County Antrim andDown and in Belfast's back entries. They rediscover this part of their heritageand explore why it has been misremembered or not remembered except by afaithful few who reject the notion of Northern Protestants as amonolithic right wing insular and anti progressive, anti Irish group. NorthernProtestants are not all like that they say. Not historically. Not now.

Ms Mitchell alsopresents the vision of 1798 - of a rights based anti-sectarian equalityproofed society- as the democratic solution to our political problems. Irecommend this book to anyone trying to understand the dynamics of northernsociety in this time of change. There is a lot of learning to be done by usall. Making space to rediscover who we are is part of that. ClaireMitchell’s book has made a mighty and positive contribution to thatnecessary task.

The Ghost Limb ispublished by www.beyondthepale.com

Michael Magee was oneof the guests at Scribes at The Rock during Féile An Phobail. He read from hisnew novel Close To Home. Scribes is a Féile highlight, a creation of DannyMorrison and now twenty-two-years old. Scribes not Danny. Michael Magee wasjoined by Michelle Gallen reading Factory Girls and Paul Murray reading The BeeSting. More of these at another time. All in all another great event.Well done, Danny. Belated apologies to the woman who appeared to be annoyed atme bunking the queue to have my books signed. Mea culpa.

And well done MichaelMagee and the other Scribes’ readers. Close to Home is an in-your-face,fast-paced graphic account of a twenty-year-old Sean and his mates and familyliving in West Belfast and mired in poverty, addiction and trauma. Sean hasjust returned from university in England but he is soon sucked back into thelife he had temporarily escaped from. His story is told by Michael Magee withbrutal honesty. Sean knows that a better life is possible but surviving thedaily challenges of existing on the edge of a community coming out ofconflict with multiple social and economic challenges threatens to drownhim in excesses of drug and alcohol binges and casual random violence. Sohe struggles to survive and to readjust.

I read Close To Homein two goes. I am undecided yet about whether Michael lets the readerfully into Sean’s emotional responses to the definitive stages of histransition. That element of the novel has stayed with me. I consider it a good thing that I am unsure of this. I read Close To Home two weeksago and I am still puzzling over this part of it.

Undoubtedly, Close ToHome does convey the young man’s emotional sense of his community, of family,particularly his relationship with his mother and his estranged fatherand the multi-traumas endured by friends, workmates and his brother Anto. Hisdepiction of the people of West Belfast, or that part of us which is portrayedin his novel, also rings true. Including his mother’s attitude to theIRA. So a very fine novel indeed and one which will stay with you long afteryou read it.

Close To Home isMichael Magee’s debut novel and is published by Picador.

Walking withmy Mother

Our mother AnnieHannaway – Annie Adams died on the 4th September 1992. Her spirit lives on inthe memory of our family and those who knew her. Here’s a little poem I wrote afew years ago.