Famine Roads - A True Story of Human Tragedy

 

The tragedy of the Great Famine will be discussed by author Charles Egan at the next talk of the Rathdrum Historical Society on Monday 8th May.

This disastrous event has been depicted in numerous novels, plays and drama on both the big and small screen. While the content can be described as ‘faction’, a mixture of fact and fiction, the two novels penned by Charles Egan, The Killing Snows and The Exile Breed are based on historical documents and family history, with a transnational element. 

Charles’ talk, entitled ‘The Famine Roads – A box of old family papers and the horror of the Great Irish Famine’, is based on six famine documents discovered by his father in 1990 in the old family farmhouse in Kiltimagh, County Mayo. The documents detail the horror of the famine relief roads during one of the most savage episodes of Irish history. They also tell of an impossible, but true, love story which had been spoken of in the family for generations.

 Though Charles was born in Nottingham, he has lived in Tipperary and London and has close connections with Wicklow where he attended the De La Salle Brothers School before moving to the Jesuits’ Clongowes Wood College. He subsequently studied Commerce in UCD. After an initial career in the private sector, he joined the IDA, before setting up his own business. Apart from literature, his main interests are history, film and worldwide travel.

 To find out more about the background to this intriguing story in Mayo, Wicklow, England and America come along to the Rathdrum Historical Society talk by Charles on Monday 8th May in Avondale Community College at 8 pm. All are welcome.    

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