Award-winning writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, and the Ambassador of Ireland in London Dan Mulhall look back at the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland and offer contrasting views on how far it helped to shape modern Ireland.

On Easter Sunday 1916, the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military council put their names to the proclamation of the Irish Republic and declared themselves a provisional government independent of British rule. The insurrection was brutally quashed by the Government of Britain and Ireland and the seven were trialled by court martial and executed by firing squad. The Irish government is commemorating the centenary of the uprising with a series of events across the country. The aim is to explore and celebrate the complexity of the last 100 years of history in Ireland in a way that embraces all communities.

Dudley Edwards, a leading commentator on Irish affairs in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland and author of several works on Irish history, questions the legacy of the seven founding fathers of the Irish Republic in her new book, The Seven: the Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic.

Mulhall is the Ambassador of Ireland in London and co-editor with Eugenio Biagini of a new book to be published in March, The Shaping of Modern Ireland: A Centenary Assessment. It is the story of the period between the death of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891 and the attainment of Irish independence in 1922, told through leading personalities who contributed to shaping modern Ireland.

The event will be chaired by Dr Edward Manigan, lecturer in public history and First World War studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a former associate director at the Centre for War Studies, Trinity College Dublin.

Supported by Lady Hatch.

Programme of Irish literature and culture.