Arts Week with Judy Murphy

It’s the time of year for escaping to a quiet corner with a good book and there has been no shortage on that front from Galway authors or with Galway themes this year, fact and fiction.

Several have landed in the past few weeks and if you feel the need to detach yourself entirely from the frenetic festive activities, then look no further than A Tract for Our Times: A Retrospective on Joe Lee’s Ireland 1912-1986, from UCD Press. This collection of essays assesses Professor Lee’s outstanding book, Ireland 1912-1985, which he wrote because “I wanted to explain my country to myself”, as he told the Irish Times in 1991.

Its contributors include Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Galway, Professor Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh. The first chapter, meanwhile, by Marion R Casey, is ‘A Portrait of the Historian as a Young Boy’ and it offers an insight into the childhood of one of this country’s finest historians.

Joe Lee was born in Kerry in 1942 and spent his early years in Castlegregory on the Dingle Peninsula, where his father was a Garda. But his parents were from Galway – his mother Cáit from Oughterard and his father Thomas from Galway City – and a notice in the Connacht Tribune from October 11, 1940, announced the wedding, in Oughterard Church, of 23-year-old Katie (Cáit) Burke to Garda Thomas Lee, aged 35, who was at the time, based in An Cheathrú Rua.

The Lees came from Bohermore and this book’s opening essay explores Joe’s parents’ backgrounds. He hadn’t done that in his own 1989 book, something that makes sense when Marion Casey points out, “their stories reveal a stratum of Ireland that was largely undocumented by historians when their son published his magnum opus in 1989”.

She interviewed Joe Lee for a fascinating story in which he recounted how his grandmother, Anne, whom he described as ‘the daughter of a strong farmer’, married his grandfather, Martin, a landless labourer, in 1910, something that would have been usual at the time.

Marion Casey sets this in context and also writes about his childhood holidays in Galway before his father, Thomas, was posted to Ballinasloe, where Joe finished his primary education and received his confirmation, taking the name Gregory in honour of his Kerry roots.

When Ireland 1912-1985, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1989, it was an instant success, appealing to readers from all walks of life as it provoked discussions on Irish identity, politics and society.

It was reprinted more than dozen times and resulted in Joe Lee appearing on a Late Late Show panel in 1990, alongside fellow professors, UCG’s Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh and Terence Brown of TCD,  for a discussion that resulted in strong viewer feedback.

Those were different times and there was some criticism that women were under-represented in this magnum opus, but all of this is given context in A Tract for Our Times, with essays from 12 leading historians. It also examines the book’s relevance to contemporary Ireland and current approaches to teaching and writing history.

Pictured: Renowned historian, Joe Lee. The opening essay in this collection explores the social history of his Galway parents as well as his own childhood.