Annual International Women’s Day Tyneside Irish Lecture

Rosie Serdiville, local author, re-enactor and Tyneside-Irish social historian presents a lecture on Dorothy Macardle, probably the best known of the group of Irish female historians writing in the 1930’s who defined the nature of the new Irish State by their description of its past. A historian, journalist, novelist, playwright activist and student of the occult, she is too often remembered solely as the politically engaged author of “The Irish Republic”. Dismissed as an apologist for de Valera (with whom she fought in the Civil War) the irony is during the 30’s her secular, liberal vision of republicanism came into conflict with the official, more conservative nationalism promoted by the established state. Even more ironic is the way the in which the work of women like Macardle and her peers has been used to airbrush so many women out of Irish history.

This lecture may well involve some dressing-up!

Gallowgate Lounge, Tyneside Irish Centre. All welcome. Free admission.