Latest News
The fourth volume of the 'Vanishing Ireland' series will be
launched in the autumn of 2013. The project
became an Irish
Times Magazine cover story on 2nd February 2013 with a
feature
article, written by Turtle, reflecting upon a 13 year
collaboration
with photographer James Fennell which now
accounts for nearly 300 insightful & poignant
portrait
interviews with
the unsung elders of
Irish society.
The first three volumes of the 'Vanishing Ireland' series
have sold well over 62,000 books. A fourth volume is due
in shops by November 2013.
Turtle has also given talks
on the project in New York, Chicago,
Dublin, Limerick,
Carlow, Kilkenny and Monte Carlo.
The Irish Independent described the most-recent volume,
'Vanishing Ireland: Recollections of Our Changing Times'
as 'an invaluable record of times past'. Published in
October 2011, it was the best-selling Picture Book in
Ireland at Christmas 2011.
The two previous volumes were short-listed for the Irish
Published Book of the Year at the 2007 and 2010 Irish
Book Awards respectively.
Click here to Join the
'Vanishing Ireland' Facebook page.
Blacksmiths,
saddlers, farmers,
fishermen
and horse
dealers unite with housemaids,
monks,
lacemakers,
publicans, postmen
and musicians to bring to life a world
which
is fading fast.
The series has also enjoyed a series of successful
shows
at Burtown House in Co. Kildare, Cill Rialaig in
Co. Kerry,
the Visual Arts
Centre
in
Carlow
(Éigse Carlow Arts
Festival,
2012) and the Hunt
Museum, Limerick
City.
The books
are available in
bookshops
across Ireland or
click here to
buy on Amazon.
Turtle Bunbury
is a best-selling
author,
historian
and TV presenter based in
Ireland.
He is the founder of Wistorical, an innovative
concept for promoting Irish
history globally.
His books include the award-winning Vanishing
Ireland series, Sporting Legends of Ireland,
The
Irish Pub and Living in Sri
Lanka. The fourth
Vanishing
Ireland book will be published later this year.
Turtle presents the new 'Hidden History' slot on
Newstalk's Breakfast Show. He is also a co-
presenter of RTE One's
'Genealogy
Roadshow', the new series
of which will air
in
the
summer of 2013.
Turtle is also curator of the 2013 History
Festival of Ireland which takes place at Duckett's
Grove, near Castledermot,
County Carlow, on the
weekend of 15-16
June 2013.
As a freelance writer, his work has been
published in The Financial Times, The New York
Post, The Australian, The Mail & Guardian (South
Africa), The South China Morning Post, The
Guardian, Vogue Living, The World of Interiors,
Country Living and Playboy.
A feature on 'Vanishing Ireland' formed the cover
story of The Irish Times Magazine in February
2013, while his upcoming articles include a travel
feature
due to be published by National
Geographic
Traveler later this year.
For an overview of Turtle's TV and radio highlights, click here
WISTORICAL
Wistorical launched on Facebook on 23rd November 2012 and has been gathering powerful momentum ever since, notching up over 7650 followers by 10th June 2013.
Wistorical is about making local history global. History is all around us. It breathes from every field and every street. Wistorical resurrects the past through word and illustration. The aim is to alert people to the vast wealth of history that is all around us, be it in Ireland or elsewhere. Of course some aspects are gloomier than others but there are also innumerable uplifting, positive and fascinating stories to be gleaned from the past. And history has the advantage of being home to the finest cast of heroes, villains, eccentrics and crackpots ever created.
As well as having a regualr slot on Beat 102FM this spring, and a preview in Hot Press, you can hear Turtle discuss the project on The John Murray Show with Kathryn Thomas on RTE Radio One here. He also spoke about the project with Síle Seoige on Newstalk.
If you have good historical tales to tell, about people, places or lesser-known events, please share them on Wistorical's Facebook page by clicking here or visit wistorical.com
(Illustration by Derry Dillon)
2013 HISTORY FESTIVAL OF IRELAND
www.thehistoryfestivalofireland.com
The second annual History Festival of Ireland will take place amongst in and around the splendid ruins of Duckett’s Grove in County Carlow on 15th & 16th June 2013.
Fifty leading historians and thinkers from Ireland, the UK, Canada and the USA will contribute to a dazzling array of over 30 debates, discussions, readings and interviews. Confronting subjects from a Bronze Age gold rush to the 1970s, the History Festival will consistently tease, confound, resolve and inspire. How did the Easter Rising shape our relationship with the USA? Was the Great Famine a tragedy, or was it genocide? How did the Tudors maintain control in Elizabethan Ireland? What was Mother Teresa doing in Belfast?
There will also be acclaimed stage shows on both the Great Hunger and Winston Churchill’s private encounters with Michael Collins, as well as musical recollections from the 1913 Lock-Out and the world of James Joyce, and a cinema showing a series of epic historical documentaries, and the revelation of the family history of special guest Nicky Byrne of Westlife. The History Festival of Ireland is curated by author and historian Turtle Bunbury.
The stellar line up for 2013 includes Gerry Stembridge, Ciaran Brady, Catherine Clinton, Ruth Dudley-Edwards, Myles Dungan, Micheál Ó Siochrú, Damian Shiels, Jane Ohlmeyer, Brian Crowley, Marie Bourke, Eamon Darcy, Ciaran O'Neill, Michael Laffan, James McGuire, Manchán Magan, Úna Ní Bhroiméil, Tom Cullivan, J.S. Dunn, Jim Shannon, Charles Mount, Colm Moriarty, Ron Eustice, Mike Murphy, Donal Fallon, Roisin Higgins, Glen Gendzel, Tommy Graham, Carole Holohan, Meredith Meagher, Robert Ballagh, Norm McMillan, Deirdre O'Byrne, Brian McCormack, Tom McGurk, Conor McNamara, Shay Kinsella, Jarlath MacNamara, Liam Kennedy, Niall Meehan, Bryan McMahon, Cliona Rattigan, Mary Muldowney, Ida Milne, Paddy Cullivan, John Cooper, Ronan Fanning, Elaine Callinan, Marc-Ivan O'Gorman, Jimmy O'Toole, Neil Jackman, Frances Devine, Pat O'Neill, Padraig Laffan, Nicola Morris, Peter Duffy and, your host, Turtle Bunbury.
To learn more about the History Festival, please sign up to our Facebook page.
To read up on the inaugural 2012 History Festival which Turtle curated and hosted at Lisnavagh House, County Carlow, on a sun-drenched weekend in June 2012, click here.
The History Festval is an Éigse initiative.
BRIEF NOTES
Turtle frequently lends his historical expertise to TV documentaries such as 'The Genealogy Roadshow' (the second series of which has now been filmed), 'Who Do You Think You Are?' and 'Wogan's Ireland', in which he pondered the drunkenness of the Jacobite troops at the battle of the Boyne with Sir Terry Wogan. In March 2013, he appeared in the 'St. Patrick's Festival Highlights' with Nicky Byrne. In September 2012, he appeared on BBC2's 'Antiques to the Rescue', with John Foster, talking about Borris House in Co. Carlow.
On Saturday 8th June at 12pm in Borris House, Turtle interviewed Peter Somerville-Large about his witty Big House novel 'Mixed Blessings' (2012) at the Borris House Festival of Writing and Ideas. At the 2013 History Festival of Ireland, Turtle will take on the role of Richard Piggott for a spoken reenactment of the inquiry into Charles Stewart Parnell’s alleged criminal activities with Myles Dungan as Charles Russell. Turtle is also on hand to reveal the family history of Nicky Byrne of Westlife, live on stage at the History Festival, alongside Nicola Morris, director of Timeline Research. Turtle will present a talk entitled 'The Dublin Docklands - An Urban Voyage' at the Little Museum of Dublin on 23rd October.
Turtle has given a series of lectures on the Irish abroad, the 'Vanishing Ireland' project and the story of the Bunbury family, to, amongst others, the New York and Chicago chapters of the Irish Georgian Society, as well as the Royal Dublin Society, the St Patrick's Festival (Marsh's Library), the Tall Ships Festival, St Columba's National School (Tullow), the Liberal Studies Group (Kilkenny) and the Irish Ancestry Research Centre at the University of Limerick. (Click here for an overview of recent talks by Turtle.)
Recent feature articles by Turtle include Trim Castle (Irish Daily Mail, April 2013) the Rebel Aristocrat (IDM, Nov 2012) Dublin Underground (IDM, August 2012), Vanishing Ireland Project (IrishCentral), the Irishman who sketched the Zulu Dawn (Mail & Guardian, July 2012), the Marquis of Sligo & Agamemnon's Tomb (Irish Daily Mail, June 2012) and the Life of Sir Richard Burton (Playboy, Nov 2011).
Tutle is a guest blogger for the Gathering Ireland 2013 campaign, as well as the Discover Ireland website (a feature about the Vanishing Ireland project enjoyed a particularly great response on the Tourism Ireland Facebook page), WorldIrish.com and the Wild Geese Blog. He has also talked about inspirational books with Daisy Banks of The Browser.
His credentials as a judge include the National Student Media Travel Awards (2013 and 2012), the inuagural schools debate hosted by Carlow IT's Department of Built Environment (November 2012) and the Powers Whiskey Ireland's Best Snug competition (November 2011).
In 2011, he was the Ireland Fund of Monaco's Writer-in-Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library.
THE GENEALOGY ROADSHOW
A second series of the 'Genealogy Roadshow' has now finished filming, with roadshows at Powerscourt, County Wicklow, University College Cork and Lumen Christi College, Derry. This follows on from the original four-part series which aired three times on RTE1 in 2011 and 2012.
The show offers a hybrid of 'The Antiques Roadshow' and 'Who Do You Think You Are?' In each episode, Turtle teams up with two genealogists to investigate claims by people who believe they have famous or infamous relatives, or that they are connected to a historical event or ancient mystery.
The series is produced by award-winning Big Mountain and hosted by Derek Mooney. For more details, click here.
HISTORY IN A BOOK
Turtle Bunbury is the founder of Your History in a Book, writing privately commissioned corporate and family histories. Each history is extensively researched, stylishly written and beautifully produced as a leather-bound hardback"coffee table" book, including interviews with family members and family photographs. The innovative concept has been acclaimed by international press such as The Irish Times and The Australian. His corporate clients include Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard, Croke Park and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority.
TO BUY TURTLE'S BOOKS ONLINE CLICK ON AN IMAGE BELOW.
Dublin Docklands, The Landed Gentry & Aristocracy of County Wicklow and The Landed Gentry of County Kildare are all presently out of print. However, you will find the content of all three books freely available via the 'Published Books' section on the sidebar of this website.
*****
This website has been compiled in the interest of furthering the research and study of both local and international history.