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WORK TITLE: The 1916 Rising
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 2/21/1972
WEBSITE: http://www.turtlebunbury.com/
CITY: County Carlow
STATE:
COUNTRY: Ireland
NATIONALITY: Irish
http://www.turtlebunbury.com/biography.html * http://www.turtlebunbury.com/published/published_books.html * https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Bunbury/e/B001ITXQEY * http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/turtle-bunbury-on-the-easter-rising-almost-taking-sides-against-my-ancestors-1.2397513
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born February 21, 1972; married Ally Moore, May 20, 2006; children: Jemima Meike, Bay Hermione.
EDUCATION:Attended Glenalmond College (Scotland) and University of Groningen (Netherlands); Trinity College Dublin, graduated, 1996.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, writer, and television host. Curator of exhibitions; founder of Wistorical and of the History Festival of Ireland; cohost of Genealogy Roadshow television program, RTE One; has appeared on the Hidden History program, Newstalk; has spoken at events in several countries.
AWARDS:Journalist of the Year Award, Ireland’s Long Haul Travel; Knight of Justice of the Military and Hospitaller Order, Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, 2010.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including National Geographic, Financial Times, London Guardian, World of Interiors, Vogue Living, Australian, and the New York Post. Author of a blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Turtle Bunbury is a writer, historian, and television host. He has appeared on Irish and British television networks on programs, including Hidden History and Genealogy Roadshow. Bunbury has also founded organizations and events, including the History Festival of Ireland and Wistorical. He has written articles that have appeared in publications, including National Geographic, Financial Times, London Guardian, World of Interiors, Vogue Living, Australian, and the New York Post.
Vanishing Ireland and The Glorious Madness
Bunbury collaborated with James Fennell on the “Vanishing Ireland” series. Volumes in the series feature interviews with elderly Irish people and accompanying photographs. The fourth book in the series is Vanishing Ireland: Friendship & Community, which finds interviewees discussing their respective childhoods, careers, and relationships. Many of the interviewees left Ireland for a time and returned for various reasons. Their careers were varied and included blacksmiths, farmers, hackney drivers, and factory workers. A critic on the A Trip to Ireland Web site suggested: “Clearly grounded in their communities, and with a wealth of knowledge of not only their own family’s history, but the history of their entire communities, this remarkable generation comes alive in the pages of this beautiful book.”
In 2014, Bunbury released The Glorious Madness: Tales of the Irish and the Great War. A reviewer on the Pale Outlaw Web site discussed details about the book and its title, stating: “The title is a quote by Woodbine Willie, a chaplain of Irish descent, later a noted pacifist, who dispensed bibles and cigarettes to the troops, and who later wrote there were ‘no words foul and filthy enough to describe’ war. Glorious Madness is splendidly illustrated with fascinating period photographs and reproductions . It comprises a collection of detailed anecdotes on scores of the more prominent Irish involved in the war, including chaplains and airmen, together with accounts of some of the battles and skirmishes in which they participated.” Among the people Bunbury profiles is Captain “Hoppy” Hardy, a notorious figure, who is best known as a formidable escape artist, suspected killer, and possible torturer. Bunbury also chronicles the life of Tom Barry, the commander of the West Cork Flying Column.
The 1916 Rising
Bunbury discusses one of the main battle’s in Ireland’s fight for independence from the British in The 1916 Rising: The Photographic Record. The book was released in the UK as Easter Dawn: The 1916 Rising. In the volume, Bunbury chronicles the events that led up to the rising, profiles the key players in the conflict, and comments on the aftermath. In an interview with a contributor to the Online version of the Irish Times, Bunbury stated: “I had initially baulked at the idea of writing a book on the Rising, knowing that our many fine bookshops would be straining at the seams to contain all the new tomes coming out on the subject. However, when I beheld the fine collection of photographs that Mercier Press had asked me to caption for the book, I was quickly sucked in. From there I went at it hammer and tongs and got so carried away that Easter Dawn is rather more than a book of captioned photographs.” Bunbury added: “Easter Dawn tries to make sense of the events that inspired the Rising, as well as offering an insight into the personalities of its key players.” “The events of 1916 still very much effect Ireland today, so it’s important people have an understanding of where those who inspired the rebellion were coming from,” Bunbury told a writer on the Dublin Book Festival Web site.
D.C. Kierdorf offered a favorable assessment of The 1916 Rising in Choice. Kierdorf commented: “This is a fine and worthwhile effort and will make a good addition to any library.” Kierdorf also categorized the volume as “highly recommended.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, June, 2016, D.C. Kierdorf, review of The 1916 Rising: The Photographic Record, p. 1536.
ONLINE
A Trip to Ireland, http://atriptoireland.com/ (May 26, 2014), review of Vanishing Ireland.
Dublin Book Festival Web site, http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/ (November 3, 2015), author interview.
Irish Times Online, http://www.irishtimes.com/ (October 19, 2015), author interview; (November 26, 2016), author interview.
Pale Outlaw, https://paleoutlaw.com/ (June 28, 2015), review of The Glorious Madness: Tales of the Irish and the Great War.
Turtle Bunbury Home Page, http://www.turtlebunbury.com/ (May 22, 2017).*
TURTLE BUNBURY is a best-selling author, historian, public speaker and TV presenter based in Ireland. His latest book "1847 - A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity & Savagery" has been described by the 2016 Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson ('Room') as "vivid, surprising, hugely entertaining; an unforgettable encounter with an extraordinary year.”
Turtle's previous books include "Easter Dawn - The 1916 Rising", "The Glorious Madness - Tales of the Irish & the Great War" (short-listed for Best Irish-published Book of the Year 2014), "The Irish Pub" and the award-winning "Vanishing Ireland" series.
He is curator of 'A City on the Sea', a maritime exhibition in Cork City, while he also founded Wistorical, an innovative concept for promoting Irish history globally, and the History Festival of Ireland.
He is an experienced public speaker, headlining at events in Chicago, Dublin, London and Paris in recent years. He was also a keynote speaker on the Paths to Freedom and Great War Roadshows, as well as a co-presenter of 'Genealogy Roadshow' on the Irish channel RTE One. He is an occasional presenter of 'Hidden History' on Newstalk's Breakfast Show in Ireland.
A past winner of Ireland's Long Haul Travel Journalist of the Year Award, he wrote the April 2014 cover story for National Geographic Traveler. His work has also been published in The Financial Times, The New York Post, The Australian, The Guardian, Vogue Living, The World of Interiors, and Playboy.
Turtle lives with his wife and two daughters in Co. Carlow.
QUOTED: "I had initially baulked at the idea of writing a book on the Rising, knowing that our many fine bookshops would be straining at the seams to contain all the new tomes coming out on the subject. However, when I beheld the fine collection of photographs that Mercier Press had asked me to caption for the book, I was quickly sucked in. From there I went at it hammer and tongs and got so carried away that Easter Dawn is rather more than a book of captioned photographs."
"Easter Dawn tries to make sense of the events that inspired the Rising, as well as offering an insight into the personalities of its key players."
Turtle Bunbury on the Easter Rising: almost taking sides against my ancestors
The magnetism of the Rising is that it has all the ingredients of an epic spaghetti western, a band of poets and revolutionaries bonded by a desire to shake off empire’s shackles
Mon, Oct 19, 2015, 15:04
1
Easter Dawn author Turtle Bunbury: My father’s great-grandfather was “out” in the Rising. Well, sort of. Given that his name was Baron Rathdonnell, you’ll appreciate that he wasn’t poking Mauser rifles out the GPO or Jacob’s Biscuit Factory
Easter Dawn author Turtle Bunbury: My father’s great-grandfather was “out” in the Rising. Well, sort of. Given that his name was Baron Rathdonnell, you’ll appreciate that he wasn’t poking Mauser rifles out the GPO or Jacob’s Biscuit Factory
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At time of writing, there are just 23 weekends to go until Easter 2016 and every pavement slab in Dublin City has by now been forensically analysed for any hint of a connection to the Rising. It has long been apparent that the centenary will be a massive event on the Irish calendar, despite the government’s forlorn attempts to make it go away.
I had initially baulked at the idea of writing a book on the Rising, knowing that our many fine bookshops would be straining at the seams to contain all the new tomes coming out on the subject. However, when I beheld the fine collection of photographs that Mercier Press had asked me to caption for the book, I was quickly sucked in. From there I went at it hammer and tongs and got so carried away that Easter Dawn is rather more than a book of captioned photographs.
I was at school in Scotland where the Easter Rising was a very small footnote on the first World War curriculum, but I became entranced by it as a teenager, reading Walter Macken novels and Max Caulfield’s account of it all.
The magnetism of the Rising is that it has all the ingredients of an epic spaghetti western. A band of poets and revolutionaries, men and women, posh folk and paupers, are bonded by a desire to shake off the shackles of empire.
They rise up and hold out for nearly a week against impossible odds before they are defeated by a combination of superior artillery fire, armoured cars and their own moral qualms in the face of excessive civilian deaths.
And then, when the Empire overreacts and executes the leaders, the people of Ireland finally come on side in a sort of messianic second coming.
It’s certainly an attractive saga upon which to frame the birth of a state.
Easter Dawn tries to make sense of the events that inspired the Rising, as well as offering an insight into the personalities of its key players.
I’m fascinated, for instance, that so many of the Irish leaders were poets, writers, actors and musicians, that Joe Plunkett was reputedly an Algerian roller-skating champion; that Bulmer Hobson was a Quaker, that the president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood at the time of the Rising went on to co-found the McCullough Pigott musical shop on Suffolk Street, Dublin.
The book has an American twist because Mercier has partnered with an American publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, who sought a book that would help explain the Rising to an American audience.
As such, Easter Dawn considers the American, or more accurately American-Irish, influence, particularly in the lead up to the Rising, as exemplified by the funeral of the “unrepentant Fenian” Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in 1915, arguably the most seminal moment for Irish nationalism prior to the Rising, following the shipment of his body from New York for burial in Glasnevin.
Many of the ringleaders had strong connections to the US – Tom Clarke was well known in New York; de Valera was half-American; the O’Rahilly was a household name in Philadelphia; Tom Kent spent half a decade in Boston.
The sponsors of the Rising were also strongly au fait with America. From their power bases in New York and Philadelphia, Kildare’s John Devoy and Dungannon’s Joe McGarrity ensured the republican Clan na Gael coffers were weighty enough to finance the rebellion.
The Volunteers would have been weapon-less without the assistance of well-to-do gun-runners like Erskine Childers, whose wife was from one of Boston’s pre-eminent families, and Mary Spring-Rice, whose first cousin was the British ambassador to Washington. Sir Roger Casement and IRB Supreme Council member Pat MacCartan (father-in-law of the late Ronnie Drew) were likewise intimate with the Irish-American elite.
Aside from the American connection and the people stories, I was also drawn to write about the Rising because of my own family connections.
My father’s great-grandfather was “out” in the Rising. Well, sort of. Given that his name was Baron Rathdonnell, you’ll appreciate that he wasn’t poking Mauser rifles out the GPO or Jacob’s Biscuit Factory.
He had arrived into Ballsbridge in his capacity as president of the Royal Dublin Society with a view to opening the Spring Show on Easter Tuesday. There was much excitement about an impending parade of North American mules and horses scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
However, as events unfurled, Wednesday instead became the day on which 2,000 untested soldiers and officers from the Sherwood Foresters marched through Ballsbridge en route to the city centre. With the hot sun beating down upon them, the doyens of the RDS organised fresh lemonade to quench their thirst.
Among these parched souls was Frederick Dietrichsen, a barrister from Nottingham, who was married to a Mitchell from the Dublin family of wine merchants. Like most Foresters, he had assumed their troopship was bound for France until it veered towards Dún Laoghaire.
Shortly after the ship docked, Dietrichsen was briefly and joyfully reunited with his two small daughters who were in Blackrock, waving flags on the pavement, when the Foresters marched through. The girls had been sent to Dublin for safety following growing fears of German Zeppelin raids in England. When he saw his daughters, Dietrichsen dropped out of the column and flung his arms around them before resuming his place with his men.
Most of the Foresters who drank lemonade at the RDS that morning were miners, farmers and factory workers. They had signed up to fight Germans, little imagining they would be dispatched to tackle a rebellion in Ireland.
Lemonade down the hatch, the Foresters advanced up Northumberland Road and straight into a crossfire ambush at Mount Street Bridge, ingeniously laid by men from de Valera’s battalion. Stubborn and successive attempts to charge the Volunteers’ positions proved utterly suicidal, leaving four Forester officers and 216 soldiers dead or maimed, marking almost half the total British military losses during the entire Rising.
Capt FC Dietrichsen was among the first to die.
Astonishingly the Spring Show continued as scheduled, albeit without a large number of patrons from the north or from across the Irish Sea. Furthermore, the RDS’s cattle stalls were destined to be reused that Sunday night when, following their surrender at Boland’s Mill, de Valera and the 3rd Battalion were marched into the RDS for their first two nights in captivity.
The fact that de Valera was held in Ballsbridge for 48 hours saved his life. By the time he was transferred to Richmond Barracks and sentenced to death, most of the other leaders had already been executed. Anxious about the mounting negative public opinion, the authorities opted to commute his sentence to penal servitude for life.
My family had other connections. Rathdonnell’s sister-in-law had an apartment on St Stephen’s Green that two members of the Irish Citizen Army used as a reconnaissance base during Easter week. He also presumably knew Abraham Watchorn, a young soldier with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who grew up on the Rathdonnell estate in Carlow and who was fated to die of gunshot wounds near Dublin Castle on Easter Wednesday.
A hundred years on, the events and consequences of that week can still bring tempers to boiling point in nano-seconds.
I’m never quite sure where I stand on the subject. My ancestors were probably wholly opposed to everything the Rising stood for, especially given that its ultimate outcome was to relieve them of the last traces of the political power they had held since the collapse of James II’s army at the Boyne.
And yet I would have disagreed with those same ancestors on many fronts. Moreover, since boyhood I have had an instinctive tendency to clench a fist in support of what the rebels were trying to achieve.
Perspective is everything. A couple of years ago I walked through the graveyards of the Western Front and heard the story of the 570 men from the 16th (Irish) Division who died when the Germans gassed their trench at Hulluch on April 27th, the fourth day of the Rising.
Or consider the British surrender of the fortress of Kut Al Amara in Mesopotamia, which took place on the very same day Pearse surrendered in Dublin. Of the 2,700 British and 6,500 Indian soldiers taken prisoner by the Ottoman Turks that day, approximately 40 per cent died from disease, exposure, fatigue, mistreatment and starvation before the end of the war.
At least 485 people were killed during the Easter Rising, the majority of them civilians hit by snipers, machine gun or indirect artillery fire. At least 40 of the slain were children aged 16 or under.
And yet it is surely a sign of a strong society that, 100 years on, we know the names of just about every one of those luckless souls who died. It is hard to imagine that those dying in their droves in the troubled zones of the modern age will be so well remembered a century from now. Perhaps that is something we should reflect upon amid all the pageantry and ruminations of the centenary commemorations.
A colleague of Rathdonnell called Evelyn Wrench managed to slip out of the RDS during the week of the Rising and climb to the top of Killiney Hill from where, aided by a pair of binoculars, he could see the GPO being “shelled with wonderful accuracy’. Many years later, reflecting upon where he stood in respect to the Irish drive for independence, Wrench remarked: “I could see ‘the other fellow’s standpoint’ so wholeheartedly that sometimes I find that I am almost taking sides against myself. It is an uncomfortable state of affairs!”
I know precisely what he means.
Turtle Bunbury, Easter Dawn - The 1916 Rising (Mercier Press, €29.99)
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voicesteeler
Turtle Bunbury is right when he suggests that the current government is uncomfortable about next years 1916 commemorations, much to their shame. His view will add a fresh perspective to that seminal event without the baggage carried by many who have written on this subject . Many have been influenced by the Northern Troubles and by personal prejudice. The likes of John Bruton, who decries the men of 1916 for their violent actions, yet extolls the virtues of John Redmond on the pretense that he... » more
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Turtle Bunbury in the sittingroom, called the library, of his home on the Lisnavagh estate in Co Carlow. Photograph: Dylan Vaughan
Turtle Bunbury in the sittingroom, called the library, of his home on the Lisnavagh estate in Co Carlow. Photograph: Dylan Vaughan
Turtle Bunbury in the sittingroom, called the library, of his home on the Lisnavagh estate in Co Carlow. Photograph: Dylan Vaughan Travel albums created by Turtle’s great-grandmother Sylvia Drew a century ago, resting on a Perspex table filled with old pool cue chalks, made by Turtle’s sister Sasha Sykes. Photograph: Dylan Vaughan Turtle Bunbury in front of one of his favourite art works, Palomas by Daniel Shaw-Smith An Ikea map of the world. Photograph: Dylan Vaughan
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Turtle Bunbury is an author, historian and public speaker whose books include the Vanishing Ireland series, The Glorious Madness and, his latest book 1847 – A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity & Savagery. He lives on the Lisnavagh estate in Co Carlow with his wife Ally and their two daughters, Jemima (9) and Bay (7).
Describe your interiors style
I grew up in a big, old house (Lisnavagh), which was stuffed with old portraits, books and bizarre curiosities gathered by ancestors on their world travels. Some of that has rubbed off on me. Our house, which we built eight years ago, is definitely old style. We cook on an Aga. The kitchen floor has an old parlour-tile ambience. All light switches are Bakelite, surmounted on Lisnavagh timber; all the sockets are of a glitzy bronze hue. We’re both hopeless optimists so the walls are painted in very bright colours. Some are lined with books, glorious books, and others are bedecked with as many of our old prints, maps and paintings as we’ve managed to hang. Neither of us are particularly handy at hammering in picture hooks so quite a lot are still resting against walls upstairs.
Which room do you most enjoy?
It sometimes seems a little OTT to call our sitting room the library, but the fact is the room is stuffed to the rafters with books. Most rest on shelves made of redbricks and oakwood planks. A wondrous Iron Dog stove at the heart of the room radiates great volcanic waves of heat through the house. However, the truth is I rarely read in the library. The only place I can achieve the required peace for such a pastime is in the bathtub where I like to read aloud so that I can properly tune in to the lyrical beat of the author’s words. To this end I am blessed by what I call my wife’s dowry – a magnificent, giraffe-length bathtub. It once belonged to a bishop and Ally’s mum had it ferried down to us from Co Monaghan while we were having the house built.
Who is your favourite designer? Do you own any of their work?
I’m heavily biased but I have a huge admiration for my sister Sasha Sykes who is a designer of ceaseless creativity. I can’t even draw the curtains myself but there is a strong artistic streak in my family that goes back at least to our great-grandmother and encompasses some extraordinary art deco and sculptural ingenuity along the way. When I see Sasha’s work, I can’t help but view it in terms of that lineage but she absolutely makes her own mark. She has gifted me a few fabulous gems, the pick of which is an acrylic boxtop table called Signs of a Misspent Youth. It contains over 1,000 pool cue chalks that she and some pals collected in New York and is set on a cruciform of sturdy slab legs. She gave it to me as a memento of the bold and happy days she and I spent in pubs during our 20s and of the so-so skill I finally acquired on the pool tables therein.
What would you save from a fire?
I’m in two minds about whether I’d rescue my diaries, which I started at the age of eight and which now lie neglected upon a shelf in the library. Maybe it would be better if they went up in smoke and took their cryptic contents with them! I think I’d ditch them in favour of the four extraordinary albums that my great-grandmother Sylvia Drew created a century ago. Bound in burgundy calf leather, they provide an exceptionally vivid portrait of the life of a well-to-do family from the last days of the Edwardian age to the economic doldrums of the 1930s. Each page combines watercolours, ink drawings and silhouettes with autographs, postcards, sketches, telegrams, photographs and other printed souvenirs. But it is the actual design, the audacious layouts and the gung-ho panache of the whole thing that commands my absolute respect.
Do you collect anything specific?
Aside from the endless books that slide onto our shelves, and the habitual coffee mugs I pick up on holiday, the thing I collect most is other people’s memories. I spend a significant portion of each year talking to people, generally of a senior vintage, about what they did with their lives or piecing together their family history. Once I have captured these memories, I convert them into stories – sometimes for the private consumption of the family and other times to go out into the public domain, as with the Vanishing Ireland series.
Which artist do you most admire?
I’m not particularly fixated by any one artist although I do have a strong soft spot for William Orpen, not least after I delved into his wartime experiences for a book I wrote about the Irish in the Great War. In terms of modern art that we actually own, and leaving my sister aside, I love a work called Palomas by Daniel Shaw-Smith, painted in Seville in 2003. We picked it up in an auction at the much lamented Flat Lake Literary and Arts Festival at Hilton Park, Co Monaghan a bunch of years ago and it remind us of that zany era of our lives.
What is the biggest interiors turn-off for you?
I’m pretty at ease in most set-ups although my heart does sink when I arrive into any house where the only cultural or artistic outlet appears to be a giant plasma telly. The photographer James Fennell and I once scored a magnificent job producing a book on the best-looking old-style pubs in Ireland – we fetched up with 40 crackers but if your pub had a TV presiding over the bar, there’s a strong chance it didn’t make the book.
What is your favourite travel destination and why?
I lived in Hong Kong for a while and worked as a travel writer for about a decade. That took me to many amazing places such as Mexico, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. You must travel as much as possible when you are young. You cannot travel too much. I’m less inclined to head too far just now, mostly for familial reasons, but normal service will resume in due course. That said, we are so enormously lucky in Ireland in terms of the immense peace, beauty and positivity that surrounds us. Ally has travelled a lot too and it was she who arranged for the large Ikea map of the world to hang over our stairwell so that our young daughters would grow up knowing that we live not in a small green field in Co Carlow but in a great big world full of islands and mountains, deserts and oceans, cities and coasts. We have a morning ritual where I stand in front of the map, the girls choose a specific spot and I tell them something riveting that happened there. I have to cheat and use Google quite a lot but I’m learning as much as they are.
If you had €100,000 to spend, what you would buy?
I’d be strongly tempted to challenge JP McManus to a game of backgammon. If gambling is off-limits, I’d ideally spend it on something that would reignite the spirit of the homeless, or else I’d like to use it to somehow revolutionise the way history is taught. It drives me mad that children can find history boring. How can the history of everything that’s ever happened, starring everyone who has ever lived, be boring? I’m pretty sure a hundred grand would inspire me to come up with ways to make history the class that every kid longs for.
Turtle Bunbury is a best-selling author, historian, public speaker and TV presenter based in Ireland. His new book 1847 - A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity and Savagery will be launched in the chq Building, Dublin, on Thursday 29 September 2016, with a guest appearance by Luka Bloom.
Turtle's last book Easter Dawn, an account of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, was published by Mercier in 2015. A US edition entitled The 1916 Rising - The Photographic Record was simultaneously published by Rowman & Littlefield.
His 2014 book The Glorious Madness - The Irish & World War One was shortlisted for Best Irish Published Book of the Year. He is also author of the acclaimed Vanishing Ireland series, a collaboration with photographer James Fennell and publishers Hachette Ireland. The last Vanishing Ireland was short-listed for Best Irish Published Book of the Year 2013, as were the first two volumes of the series. The series has now sold in excess of 77,000 books.
His other books include Sporting Legends of Ireland, The Irish Pub and Living in Sri Lanka.
Turtle has given talks on his books in New York, Paris, London, Chicago, Dublin, Limerick, Carlow, Cork, Kilkenny and Monte Carlo. He returns to Chicago as a keynote speaker for the iBAM Conference on 14-16 October 2016. He was the narrator for the Ireland exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and has spoken in the city thrice before. He is also a keynote speaker on the Paths to Freedom and Great War Roadshows, which have been touring Ireland since 2014.
He was a co-presenter of the first two series of 'Genealogy Roadshow', the pioneering RTE television series. He was also Newstalk Breakfast's Resident Historian from June to December 2013, as well as co-founder of the History Festival of Ireland, curating the event in 2012 and 2013. He is the founder of Wistorical, an innovative concept for promoting Irish history globally, as well as the Vanishing Ireland Facebook page.
A past winner of Ireland's Long Haul Travel Journalist of the Year Award, Turtle's work has been published in National Geographic Traveler (April 2014), Playboy, Vogue Living, The Irish Times, The Financial Times, The New York Post, The Australian, The Guardian and The World of Interiors.
Click here for a chronology of his recent activities.
Turtle was born on 21st February 1972 and raised at Lisnavagh House, Rathvilly, Co. Carlow, Ireland. He received his early education in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, before moving to Castle Park School in Dublin. From 1980 to 1985, he was at Glenalmond College in the Scottish Highlands where he secured the necessary results at A-Level to read law at Trinity College Dublin. He opted to postpone college and go traveling.
At the age of eighteen, Turtle left Ireland for the U.S.A., working his way across the continent from New York to Los Angeles over three months. He subsequently spent six months in New Zealand and Australia, returning to Ireland, via Singapore and Malaysia, to commence his legal studies in Dublin. The law did not suit him and in 1994 Turtle happily transferred to history. He spent one year at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands before returning to Dublin to complete his degree at Trinity in 1996.
Armed with a degree in modern history from Trinity College Dublin, he moved to Hong Kong in 1996 and spent three years working as a freelance correspondent with the South China Morning Post and Business News Indochina. During this time he experienced an extraordinary period of history while attempting to establish a guesthouse in Cambodia in the same month that Pol Pot was captured. He also visited Vietnam, Thailand, Macau and Tokyo.
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Above: Turtle Bunbury and James Fennell at the launch of
'The Irish Pub' in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin, in 2008.
(Photo: Stu Carroll)
Returning to Ireland on the eve of the new millennium, he spent two years working with the travel company, Trailblazer.com, an early victim of the Dot Bomb crash of 2002. He simultaneously developed his interest in Irish and world history, contributing articles to magazines and newspapers around the world.
Since 2004, Turtle has established himself as one of the most prolific and energetic writers in Ireland. As well as his twelve published books, he has travelled extensively, most notably in the USA, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, France and Australia. His work on Sri Lanka earned him the award for Ireland’s Longhaul Travel Journalist of the Year in 2006.
For a detailed look at Turtle's Books, click here.
He also founded ‘Your History in a Book’, creating thoroughly researched and handsomely illustrated family histories, presented as leather-bound books.
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(Photo: Gerry Moore)
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(Photo: Suki Stuart).
Turtle Bunbury
(Photo: Ally Bunbury)
Turtle Bunbury
(Photo: Ally Bunbury)
A frequent contributor to The Irish Times, The Irish Daily Mail and other national newspapers, Turtle is a well known name on TV and radio. He was one of the co-presenters on the 'Genealogy Roadshow', which ran to two series between 2011 and 2014. He appeared on BBC2's 'Antiques to the Rescue', with John Foster, talking about Borris House in Co. Carlow. On BBC1's 'Wogan's Ireland', he pondered the drunkenness of the Jacobite troops at the battle of the Boyne with Sir Terry Wogan. In 2009, he was a historical consultant for the Irish series of 'Who Do You Think You Are?', most notably the episode with former Miss World, Rosanna Davison.
Turtle was also the consultant and scriptwriter for the BIFF award-nominated 'John Henry Foley - Ghost of the Empire' which first aired on TG4 in November 2008. Turtle is also a frequent guest on 'Nationwide', TV3's 'Ireland A.M.' and Irish radio. In May 2011, he talked about Obama's visit to Ireland with Michael Patrick Shiels on Michigan's Morning Show (1240 WJIM).
For a detailed look at Turtle's TV and radio profile, click here.
***
On May 20th 2006, Turtle married Miss Ally Moore of Bishopscourt, Clones, Co. Monaghan. Their eldest daughter Jemima Meike McClintock Bunbury was born in Our Lady of Lourdes, Drogheda, Co Louth, on 17th June 2007. Their second daughter Bay Hermione McClintock Bunbury was born in Drogheda on 4th February 2009. Since 2007, the Bunburys have lived on the family estate at Lisnavagh, Rathvilly, Co. Carlow, where they built a new house. The Bunburys moved into Old Fort in July 2008.
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In September 2010, Turtle was made a Knight of Justice of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem.
In the autumn of 2011 he spent four weeks in the Principality of Monaco as the Ireland Funds writer-in-residence to the Princess Grace Irish Library.
Turtle Bunbury is a best-selling author, historian, public speaker and TV presenter based in Ireland. His latest book '1847 - A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity & Savagery’ was published in September 2016 and reached No. 8 in the Irish non-fiction charts. His recent books include 'Easter Dawn - The 1916 Rising', 'The Glorious Madness - Tales of the Irish & the Great War' (short-listed for Best Irish-published Book of the Year 2014), the award-winning 'Vanishing Ireland' series, 'The Irish Pub' and 'Living in Sri Lanka'. Since 2006, four of his books have been short-listed for the Best Irish Published Book of the Year. He is a keynote speaker on the Paths to Freedom and Great War Roadshows, and a co-presenter of 'The Genealogy Roadshow' on the Irish television channel RTE One. He is the founder of Wistorical, an innovative concept for promoting Irish history globally. Turtle also co-founded the History Festival of Ireland. He was Newstalk Breakfast's Resident Historian from June to December 2013. A past winner of Ireland's Long Haul Travel Journalist of the Year Award, he wrote the April 2014 cover story for National Geographic Traveler. His work has also been published in The World of Interiors, Playboy, The Irish Times, The Financial Times, The New York Post, The Australian, The Guardian and Vogue Living.
QUOTED: "The events of 1916 still very much effect Ireland today, so it’s important people have an understanding of where those who inspired the rebellion were coming from."
DBF Interviews: Turtle Bunbury
3 Nov, 2015 in Interviews / News tagged Author / DBF2015 / The People of the 1916 Rising / Turtle Bunbury by Admin
Turtle BunburyWe talked to historian and author Turtle Bunbury about some of the remarkable personalities behind the 1916 Rising. Turtle will be one of the panellists for The People of the 1916 Rising event.
Q: Your new book, Easter Dawn: The 1916 Rising (Mercier Press), examines many of the extraordinary characters who played some part in the Rising. Did any of the stories surprise you in any way? Were there people who we should know more about but have been lost to history somewhat?
I think the part that most surprised me was how creative the prime players on the Irish side were, as in nearly all of them had a penchant for poetry, music, acting or the arts. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised; revolutions are often spear-headed by intellects, but I think that aspect of the Rising nonetheless made a strong impression. As for neglected players, I reckon most people have received due credit one way or another by now although I think there should be more made of the surgeons and nurses from Sir Thomas Myles and John Lumsden to Ella Webb, John Francis Holman and the people on the ground.
Q: Is there a worry that, as the centenary of the Rising approaches, we are in danger of romanticising the events and people? How did you go about dealing with that concern when writing the book?
Of course. If one was to criticise any of the revolutionary leaders on, say, social media, there would be a welter of abuse showered upon you … at present it is as if the leaders are ‘untouchable’ but I actually anticipate a bit more cerebral debate about the differences between them in coming months. Had the 16 men not been executed, I wonder how well they would have got on afterwards. Presumably there would have been a blame game of sorts and revered icons such as Casement would have been chastised while the fight within the Volunteers would have been considerably more vocal.
Q: What would you like people to take away from reading your book?
With my books I try to explain the background to people, to show where they came from and what they were up to before events overtook them. The events of 1916 still very much effect Ireland today, so it’s important people have an understanding of where those who inspired the rebellion were coming from. I’d actually like to have included more about the British participants in my book than I did, but I ran out of time. I also sought to find that rarest of things in the Easter 1916 chronicles, namely humour. Not least because men like Tom Clarke, MacDonagh and MacDiarmada had a strong sense of humour.
QUOTED: "This is a fine and worthwhile effort and will make a good addition to any library."
"highly recommended."
Bunbury, Turtle. The 1916 Rising: the photographic record
D.C. Kierdorf
53.10 (June 2016): p1536.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Bunbury, Turtle. The 1916 Rising: the photographic record. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 320p bibl Index afp ISBN 9781442244610 cloth, $34.95
(cc) 53-4548
DA962
MARC
The delightfully named Turtle Bunbury--journalist, travel writer, and Irish radio and television presenter--offers this history of the Easter Rising in Ireland, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the revolt against British authority that led to Irish independence. This volume is aimed at a popular market and, as the subtitle indicates, overflows with hundreds of photos and illustrations from the period. Bunbury has written a good, lively account of the lead-up to the Rising, the organizations involved, the preparations, the details of the fighting itself, the aftermath up to the surrender of the rebels, and the executions of the leaders. During Easter week 1916, a number of colorful and fascinating personalities marched and strutted across the stage that was Dublin, and these figures and their fates are recounted with great flourish. One caveat is the lack of maps that would help readers unfamiliar with Dublin geography to follow the course of events more accurately. Nevertheless, this is a fine and worthwhile effort and will make a good addition to any library catering to the general public, particularly anywhere there is an interest in Irish history. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. All public and undergraduate libraries.--D. C. Kierdorf, Bentley University
Kierdorf, D.C.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kierdorf, D.C. "Bunbury, Turtle. The 1916 Rising: the photographic record." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1536. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942959&it=r&asid=796f62fc2ee079b160eb4efb6302ac43. Accessed 8 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942959
QUOTED: "Clearly grounded in their communities, and with a wealth of knowledge of not only their own family’s history, but the history of their entire communities, this remarkable generation comes alive in the pages of this beautiful book."
Book Review: Vanishing Ireland: Friendship & Community by James Fennell & Turtle Bunbury
May 26, 2014 in Ireland, Irish Books & Literature, Life in Ireland | 1 comment
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Vanishing Ireland is a series of books that combines revealing interviews with some of Ireland’s oldest residents with striking photographs of the subjects.
Vanishing Ireland cover
Vanishing Ireland: Friendship and Community by James Fennell & Turtle Bunbury
There’s often not much to review in a coffee table book; featuring lots of large glossy pictures of beautiful places, things, or people, they’re only really good for daydreaming. I prefer my coffee table books to have a strong textual element, to marry striking photographs or illustrations to interesting arguments or well-structured stories. Vanishing Ireland: Friendship & Community, photographs by James Fennell and words by Turtle Bunbury, succeeds on both counts.
Traveling around the country, Fennell and Bunbury interview Ireland’s oldest generation (all the subjects seem to be in their late-70s or 80s, when they admit to any age) and the stories that pour out are remarkable. Many grew up in large families who saw a great deal of emigration. Perhaps surprisingly, several of the interviewees actually came back from abroad after relatively short periods, to inherit farms, get married, or just out of a deep need to return home.
The various careers of the books’ subjects illustrates the social and economic history of work in Ireland, with some starting off in trades soon to be rendered almost obsolete (blacksmiths, coopers) or replaced by cheaper goods from overseas (textile manufacture, sugar beet harvesting), and going on to have varied careers. Emigration to the building sites of London or a transient existence picking sugar beet seasonally in England allowed many to make some money before returning home to marry or set themselves up with a farm.
Many, perhaps most, operated small farms on the side while working at various careers in the ESB (state-owned power generation) or Bord na Móna (the semi-state body that manages the bogs). Others were among the first in their localities to own a car, which they cannily turned into a source of income by operating as hackney drivers, ferrying neighbors to mass, GAA matches, or the big city for a day’s shopping.
This generation is remarkable for having lived through so many stages of Irish history: occupation, rebellion, independence, the modernization of the 1960s, and now the boom and bust of the Celtic Tiger. From the pictures of their houses — old, family homes all — it’s clear that these people did not lose the run of themselves in the boom years. I remember many such houses in our parish while I was growing up, many of which were replaced by new build or simply left to fall into ruin during the boom, after the older generation had passed on.
Clearly grounded in their communities, and with a wealth of knowledge of not only their own family’s history, but the history of their entire communities, this remarkable generation comes alive in the pages of this beautiful book.
QUOTED: "The title is a quote by Woodbine Willie, a chaplain of Irish descent, later a noted pacifist, who dispensed bibles and cigarettes to the troops, and who later wrote there were 'no words foul and filthy enough to describe' war.
Glorious Madness is splendidly illustrated with fascinating period photographs and reproductions . It comprises a collection of detailed anecdotes on scores of the more prominent Irish involved in the war , including chaplains and airmen, together with accounts of some of the battles and skirmishes in which they participated."
IRELAND’S GREAT WAR by KEVIN MYERS ; THE GLORIOUS MADNESS by TURTLE BUNBURY : two reviews
June 28, 2015 by paleoutlaw, posted in Book Reviews
IRELAND’S GREAT WAR KEVIN MYERS LILLIPUT PRESS 248pp €20.00
THE GLORIOUS MADNESS TURTLE BUNBURY GILL & MACMILLAN 338 pp €26.99 e book €18.44
“HE LOST HIMSELF COMPLETELY” BRENDAN KELLY THE LIFFEY PRESS 152 pp €16.95
“Not merely had people forgotten, but they’d forgotten that they’d forgotten.” This, from the opening page of Kevin Myers’ powerful book, was his comment in 1979 on the derelict state of the Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge.
Here are three different but complementary books on the four year conflict which impacted heavily on Ireland, leaving roughly 40,000 young Irishmen dead, with many thousands more wounded or scarred mentally from their experience. By comparison 1400 were killed in the War of Independence, and at most several thousand in the Civil War. Yet until recently Irish participation in the Great War was airbrushed out – except in Northern Ireland – and the dead and their sacrifice ignored or discounted.
Happily this has now changed, as epitomised most recently by Ambassador Dan Mulhall laying a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. This is due at least in part to the indefatigable efforts, over many years, of Kevin Myers to focus public attention on the issue and challenge the policy of official neglect. His book, a compilation of articles and lectures delivered in recent years, with one piece going back to 1980, reflects this. Myers points up the scale of volunteering in the first years of the War across all creeds and political affiliations and then recounts the ebbing of support after 1916 and the subsequent re-writing of history.
Several chapters on the impact of the war on different counties help bring into focus and humanise what was a mini-holocaust, with an average of one hundred Irishmen dying each day the war lasted, including two of the very last casualties. Taking two examples, almost four hundred Sligo men died during the conflict, while the figure for Kerry was 718, with 340 from Tralee alone. Again, all classes and creeds were affected. The impact on small communities across Ireland was huge, yet afterwards the dead were unacknowledged, those returning ignored or even pilloried. In Sligo, for example, the only annual commemorations were for the nineteen IRA men slain in the War of Independence. Selective amnesia about the Great War became the norm.
The horrors of the trenches, the squalor, the terrible deaths of the Irish are described in detail in Myers’ characteristically unsparing prose. Some of the multiple deaths among families are recounted, again across the classes. There are separate chapters on Francis Ledwidge and Robert Gregory, the Irish Airman immortalised and romanticised in Yeats’ poem.
The chapter on Gallipoli corrects a few of the myths but the reality remains equally shocking. The fate of the Dublin Fusiliers attempting to storm the Kiritch Tepe Sirt ridge, as recounted by Myers, is particularly memorable. The cull on that hillside included, among the Pals of the Footballers (drawn from the IRFU), a TCD professor of law and the chief botanist from the Botanic Gardens, killed with the others in a bayonet charge uphill against machine guns.
Myers points out that , to match the legendary – and much commemorated – losses of the 36th Ulster Division on the Somme (2000 dead) , should be set the even greater – but unacknowledged – losses (2700) of the 16th (nationalist) Irish Division. One of them, Tom Kettle, killed in 1916, his head cradled by eighteen year old Emmet Dalton, who did the same for the dying Michael Collins a few years later, is given special mention. Remembered now chiefly for his sonnet to his daughter, he was perceptive enough to comment that “Pearse and the others will go down in history as heroes and I will be just a bloody English officer.”
Tom Kettle and Emmet Dalton feature also in Turtle Bunbury’s excellent “ Glorious Madness,” which is a fitting complement to Myers’ work. The title is a quote by Woodbine Willie, a chaplain of Irish descent, later a noted pacifist, who dispensed bibles and cigarettes to the troops, and who later wrote there were “no words foul and filthy enough to describe” war.
Glorious Madness is splendidly illustrated with fascinating period photographs and reproductions . It comprises a collection of detailed anecdotes on scores of the more prominent Irish involved in the war , including chaplains and airmen, together with accounts of some of the battles and skirmishes in which they participated. Of particular note is Tom Barry, who fought in Iraq, honing the skills he would later impart to training the West Cork Flying Column after 1919.
There’s even a chapter on Captain “Hoppy” Hardy, British ace escaper, later ace interrogator, who earned notoriety subsequently as the probable torturer of both Kevin Barry and Ernie O’Malley and as the murderer of comedian Brendan O’Carroll’s grandfather in 1920. Hardy escaped Collins’ hitmen on Bloody Sunday.
Brendan Kelly’s book is a reminder that many returned from the front physically unscathed but mentally shattered. Written by one of Ireland’s most eminent psychiatrists, the book charts the treatment of 362 shell shocked soldiers in Dublin’s Richmond War Hospital between 1916 and 1919.From the anecdotes in the final chapter, including one quoting Gay Byrne on his father’s nightmares, it is clear that many thousands more were profoundly disturbed and haunted throughout their lives by that terrible conflict.
07/12/14