Castlepollard historian to feature on War of Independence documentary
A Westmeath native and leading historian of the Irish Revolution will feature on the second part of new two-part documentary series focusing on British perspectives on the Irish War of Independence (1919-21).
The first episode of ‘Hawks and Doves’, hosted by former British defence secretary Michael Portillo, aired on RTÉ 1 last Wednesday night.
Dr Marie Coleman, a native of Castlepollard and Reader in Modern Irish History at Queen’s University, Belfast, is one of the contributors for the second instalment which airs on the same channel this Wednesday night (June 17) at 9.35pm.
In ‘Hawks and Doves’, former Conservative Party hardliner Portillo meets with a host of leading Irish historians to discuss British responses to events in Ireland from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, to the signing of the Truce in July 1921.
Episode two begins with the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Dublin in November 1920, and deals with the most intense phase of the IRA’s guerrilla war.
Dr Coleman, a graduate of UCD, studied the revolutionary period in Longford – a hotbed of IRA activity during the War of Independence – for her PhD thesis, which she completed in 1998.
In recent years, she has published the definitive history of the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake, as well as working on projects related to revolutionary-era military service pensions and violence against women during the Irish Revolution.
Dr Coleman was among 20 academics interviewed for the three-part RTÉ 1 documentary series, ‘The Irish Revolution’, which aired in February 2019.