The Guide

Writing Dublin’s Famine story into Ireland’s history books

Books, films and plays have so far generally dealt with rural Ireland’s experience of the Irish Famine: Dublin and the Great Famine focuses on the effect the catastrophe had on the country’s capital

The Famine Memorial at Customs House Quay on the banks of the Liffey in Dublin. Picture: Getty

The Irish Famine occupies an important part of our cultural memory and has been vastly explored across the Irish arts. Books like Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea turned the subject into bestselling material, while it has been the backdrop to several recent Irish films, most recently in Tomás Ó Súilleabháin’s Arracht and Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder, based on Emma O’Donoghue’s 2016 novel, currently on general release. In the theatre, meanwhile, the Famine has served ...