Ireland's Hidden Histories and Secret Stories

Available for over a year

Hidden histories and secret stories from Ireland today with John Gallagher and his guests: poet Majella Kelly whose debut collection reckons with the legacy of the mother and baby home mass grave scandal in her hometown of Tuam, writer Carmel McMahon who has recently returned to County Mayo from New York and whose work explores familial trauma and collective suffering, and historian Jackie Ui Chionna who has uncovered the secret life of the Galway born language professor and musicologist Emily Anderson – as one of the top codebreakers in the world playing a leading role in British Intelligence in both World Wars. And New Generation Thinker Louise Brangan, who has researched the history of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, gives an insight into a surprisingly lenient time in Ireland’s prisons – the 1970s. Producer in Salford: Ruth Thomson The Speculations of Country People by Majella Kelly is a poetry collection inspired by the Tuam mother and baby home mass grave uncovered in 2017. Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain's Greatest Female Code Breaker by Jackie Uí Chionna is out now. In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History by Carmel McMahon is out now. Dr Louise Brangan is Chancellor's Fellow in Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde Glasgow and a 2023 New Generation Thinker.