Four Killings: Land, Hunger, Murder & Family in the Irish Revolution - Myles Dungan in Conversation with Catriona Crowe
Dublin Festival of History PodcastShow Notes
Myles Dungan’s family was involved in four violent deaths between 1915 and 1922. Jack Clinton, an immigrant small farmer from County Meath, was murdered in the remote and lawless Arizona territory by a powerful rancher’s hired assassin; three more died in Ireland, and each death is compellingly reconstructed in this extraordinary book. Mark Clinton was murdered by a group of agrarian ‘bandits’ who resented his family’s possession of some disputed acres; his killer was tried and executed by the dead man’s relatives and comrades in the Meath IRA. A mentally challenged youth was shot as an informer by another relative of Dungan’s, and buried in secrecy and silence.
Myles Dungan’s book, focused on one family, offers an original perspective on this still controversial period: a prism through which the moral and personal costs of violence, and the elemental conflict over land, come alive.
Myles Dungan is an Irish broadcaster and author. He has presented many arts programmes on RTÉ Radio, and has also been a sports broadcaster on RTÉ Television. Since October 2010 he has been the presenter of “The History Show” on RTÉ Radio One.
Catriona Crowe is one of Ireland’s leading historians and commentators. She was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2012.
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