Roddy Doyle @EIBF

 

A Star Called Henry, the first in a planned trilogy to be titled The Last Roundup was published in 1999, and was followed in 2004 by Oh, Play That Thing! and now, in 2010, by the concluding part, The Dead Republic. They follow an Irishman called Henry Smart as he negotiates the 20th Century, taking part in the Easter Rebellion in the first book, moving to America in the second and now, in the conclusion, coming back to Ireland, as a consultant for John Ford on a film about his life, which quickly becomes a different film entirely. Doyle mentions that he’d always noticed that there was a credit on The Quiet Man for an IRA consultant, but you’d be hard pressed to actually find them in the film. Interestingly, the credited man is called Ernie O’Malley, who Doyle admits was an influence on Henry Smart’s character, and who wrote what Doyle said was the best of the IRA memoirs, On Another Man’s Wound. After a chat about The Dead Republic, the event became a reading by Doyle in the Elsewhere strand. It was a fantastic tale of two Irishmen from the present day ending up in the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847, and changing sides for realistic, unprincipled reasons. A great end to a good event. [Keir Hind]