Greystones Archaeological & Historical Society

Greystones Archaeological and Historical Society’s first meeting of 2016 will take place on Thursday evening, 21 January. The guest speaker will be well-known biographer and local historian Bryan MacMahon, on the subject of his latest book, Robert Tressell, Dubliner: author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Robert Tressell (real name Robert Noonan) was born in Dublin in 1870, emigrated with his family to London as a child, and earned his living as a house-painter and sign-writer while writing his only novel, which described the lives and struggles of working men. The book failed to find a publisher, and Tressell died a pauper in Liverpool in 1911. The ragged-trousered philanthropists finally appeared in 1914, going on to become a classic of socialist literature, described by George Orwell as ‘a book that everyone should read.’ Bryan MacMahon’s account of Tressell’s varied and tempestuous career reveals aspects both of his Irish background and of his working life and activism in England and South Africa.

The meeting will be at 8pm in the Holy Rosary Family Centre, Greystones. Admission 2 euro. All welcome.