MAHS centenary lecture on Laurence Ginnell

The Annebrook House Hotel, Mullingar will be the venue for the pen-ultimate lecture in Meath Archaeological and Historical Society’s programme for 2018 on Sunday next, 28th October.

The lecture, entitled ‘Dissent and reaction: Laurence Ginnell, World War I and the Irish question’, takes place on Sunday next, 28th October at 3pm.

Dr Paul Hughes, who recently graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast, with a PhD in History centred on Ginnell’s later career, will give an account of Ginnell’s political activism during World War I – which, Dr Hughes argues, was the very height of the subject’s power and influence in Ireland.

In a time when nobody had yet heard of an Éamon de Valera or Michael Collins, Ginnell was a household name in both Ireland and Britain, aggressively opposing Irish involvement in World War I. In doing so, he generated adulation and hostility in equal measure – some of which will be outlined in this lecture.

By early 1916, so visible was Ginnell in projecting a more advanced form of Irish nationalism on the world stage, that he was nicknamed ‘The MP for Ireland’. The Meath Chronicle, in 1918, referred to him as ‘the best hated man in England’.

This Mullingar lecture, at 3pm, takes place just over 100 years after the original Meath Archaeological and Historical Society was formed in the town.