24.04.2015
Kevin Myers Delivers Poignant Ardilaun Lecture at Alexandra College
Historian and author, Kevin Myers, delivered a moving lecture in Alexandra College on the forgotten Irish men who fought in the First World War. The lecture, entitled ‘The Forgotten 40,000: Ireland’s Great War’ was part of the Ardilaun Lecture Series at the Milltown school.
Mr Myers’ passionate talk, based on his latest book ‘Ireland’s Great War’, directed his audience through that catastrophic war and emphasised the humanity of its victims; particularly poignant in a week that sees the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign.
The Ardilaun Lectures were endowed in 1921 by Lady Ardilaun in memory of her husband Lord Ardilaun. They were originally only concerned with French history, a passion of Lady Ardilaun, and the primary aim of the endowment was to permit a distinguished historian of French history who was ‘a graduate of a university outside Ireland and a man of universal distinction and known ability as a lecturer’ to be invited to Alexandra College each year.
The very first lecture took place In January 1921. Professor Grant Robertson, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and Principal of the University of Birmingham, gave four lectures on ‘The Age of Louis XIV and the Period of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire’. In the following two years he lectured on ‘Marie Antoinette’ and ‘The Second Empire’. Over the course of the following 94 years however, the lectures evolved to cover Irish, American and European history.
This year two lectures took place. The first was given in November by Professor Mary Daly, President of the Royal Irish Academy.
Kevin Myers is pictured right with Archbishop Michael Jackson (top) and Alexandra College Principal, Barbara Ennis. (Photos: Patrick Hugh Lynch)