A Talk on Fr F. X. Martin and the 1916 Rising

Felix M. Larkin

Our autumn lecture series this year will take as its theme the Irish priest in history and society.

The first lecture in the series will  take place at 6.30pm on Tuesday 30th September, and our speaker will be Felix Larkin. Felix will explore F. X. Martin's contribution to the historiography of the 1916 Rising.

F. X. Martin (1922-2000) was an Augustinian priest and professor of Medieval History in University College Dublin. He is today best remembered for spearheading the campaign in the late 1970s to save the Wood Quay archaeological site in Dublin. In the 1960s and early 1970s, however, he published an impressive series of books, edited collections and essays on the 1916 Rising and related issues. He claimed - correctly - that these were 'the first attempt at a cool appraisal of the Easter Rising in the context of the Ireland of its time'. His work challenged not only the conventional historical view of the Rising, but also the view of Irish history generally that Pearse and his followers had put forward in their proclamation of the republic, read out at the GPO on Easter Monday 1916 and which had subsequently taken hold of the public mind. He is accordingly regarded as one of the 'two godfathers of revisionism', to quote Pádraig Ó Snodaigh. The main purpose of Felix Larkin's paper is to review Martin's work on 1916 and to consider its continued relevance as we prepare to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising.

Felix M. Larkin is academic director of the Parnell Summer School. A retired public servant, he now works as a historian and freelance writer. He has written extensively on the press in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he is a founder member of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland. His publications include Terror and Discord: the Shemus cartoons in the Freeman's Journal, 1920-1924 (Dublin, 2009), and, as editor, Librarians, poets and scholars: a Festschrift for Dónal Ó Luanaigh (2007). Forthcoming in 2014 is Periodicals and journalism in twentieth-century Ireland, jointly edited by Felix Larkin and Mark O' Brien.

Felix is a member of the council of the Central Catholic Library, and also serves on the statutory Readers Advisory Committee of the National Library of Ireland. His is chairman of the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society, Dublin's oldest charity.