Donald Brady is a former County Librarian, historian and author of numerous historical books. He will speak on Gerald Villierstown Stuart (1869-1951): Author, Politician and Businessman.

Donald has delivered a paper at every festival since 2005. Donald never disappoints.

Donald Brady was born in Cavan and obtained his B.A. in History and English at Maynooth. He was County Librarian for County Waterford from 1982 until 2010. He served as director of the West Waterford Heritage Week in 1991 and 1992. He was the co-ordinator of Waterford County Council’s Famine Commemoration Programme and served on the National Committee charged with the protection of the Woodstown Viking Settlement.

He has edited major Waterford histories including, Hansard’s History of Waterford and Smith’s History of Waterford. Some of his more recent books are W.E.D. Allen & Other Essays, and A Study of the Life and Work of Regina Maria Roche.

Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.

Anne Roper is both a writer and a television producer/director working for RTE TV. As a journalist, she has contributed travel articles to The Irish Times, IMAGE magazine and The Sunday Independent newspapers. While making documentaries, she has travelled from Africa to Asia and most recently, to Alaska for ‘Women Of The Gold Rush’, part of RTE’s Hidden History strand.

She is currently working on a profile of another Irish woman traveller and adventurer: the Victorian actress and courtesan, Lola Montez.

Lecture Title: North To Alaska (The Real Top Of The World!)

About ‘Women Of The Gold Rush’: a 52 minute documentary produced & directed by Anne Roper.

Before Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean donned snow shoes south, three formidable Irish women trudged across Alaska’s frozen frontier dressed only in whalebone and long skirts. They had already made the perilous journey from famine Ireland to America, in search of a new life. By 1898, the gold fields of the Klondike were firmly in their sights. While for some, reaching El Dorado meant a life of wealth and independence, for others, tragedy lay at the end of their arctic journey to the top of the world.

Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.

Michael Edward Palin (born May 5, 1943,in Sheffield, Yorkshire) is a British comedian and television presenter. He is famous for being a member of Monty Python and writing and starring in their Flying Circus series in which he generally played roles that called for manic enthusiasm (such as the lumberjack of the Lumberjack Song), or unflappable calmness (such as the Dead Parrot vendor or Cheese Shop proprietor). As the latter, he was often the perfect foil to the rising ire of characters portrayed by John Cleese. Michael Palin was educated at Birkdale preparatory school and Shrewsbury public school. He went on to read History at Brasenose College, Oxford.

After Monty Python, Palin subsequently collaborated with Python writing partner Terry Jones on the television comedy series Ripping Yarns. He also appeared in All You Need Is Cash as the lawyer and press agent for The Rutles.

In later years, Palin rejoined Cleese for the movies A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures and played an information retrieval specialist in fellow Python Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. He has assisted Transport 2000 and others with campaigns on transport policy issues, particularly those relating to urban areas.

More recently, he has presented several series of travel programmes on television;

Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days (1989), travelling as closely as possible the path described in the famous Jules Verne story of the same name without using aircraft.
Pole to Pole (1992), travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, following as closely as possible the 30 degree line of longitude, over as much land as possible – i.e., through Europe and Africa
Full Circle with Michael Palin (1997), in which he circumnavigated the lands around the Pacific Ocean counter-clockwise, starting on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait
Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure (1999), retracing the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway through the United States, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean
Sahara (2002), in which he trekked through the world’s largest desert.
Himalaya (2004), in which he travels through the Himalaya region
Palin’s travel programmes are responsible for a phenomenon termed the “Palin effect”, in which areas of the world visited by Michael Palin suddenly become popular tourist attractions – for example, the significant increase in the number of British tourists interested in holidaying in the Sahara region in 2003.
Palin has also appeared as a ‘straight’ actor in serious drama, most notably in the 1991 serial G.B.H., broadcast on the Channel 4 network in the UK.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian’s Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

Books By Michael Palin Include:

• Ripping Yarns – 1978
• Around the World in 80 Days – 1989
• Pole to Pole – 1992
• Hemingway’s Chair – 1996
• Full Circle: A Pacific Journey with Michael Palin – 1997
• Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure – 1999
• Sahara – 2002
• Himalaya – 2004

Biography Copyright Wikipedia

Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.

Catherine de Courcy is an author and historian who born and reared in Dublin. She met John Johnson, an Australian army officer and Vietnam veteran, while working in Papua New Guinea in 1986 and moved to Melbourne with him. Together they travelled the Australian outback and wrote two highly successful travel books. Following John’s death by suicide in 2000, she approached her grief as a tough adventure into the unknown. Drawing on tales of explorers and mystical cultures for inspiration, she pursued the indefinable goal of recovery with determination and good humour. Five years after returning to Ireland and satisfied she had fully recovered, she wrote about her explorations and challenges in a book, ‘An adventure in grief’.

Catherine is also an authority on the history of zoos and is currently completing an illustrated history of Dublin Zoo, scheduled for publication by The Collins Press in October 2009.

Books by Catherine include Foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland (1985), The Jimi River Expedition (1988), Zoos of Australia (1993), Zoo Story (1995), Desert Tracks (1998), River Tracks (2001), and Evolution of a Zoo (2003).

An adventure in grief is published by The Collins Press.

Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.

Brian Keenan was born in Belfast. He was educated at Ulster University where he obtained an MA and where he taught briefly before taking up a lecturing position at the American University in Beirut. In 1985 Keenan was abducted in Beirut by the Hezbollah militia and held as a hostage in their war against the Israeli occupation of the Lebanon and the United States government’s support for same.

During his imprisonment Keenan was chained, blindfolded, beaten and assaulted in secret locations in the Lebanon, South Beirut, Baalbeck and near the Israeli border. He was moved fifteen times during his captivity, often in car boots or the underside of vehicles and spent one year without anything to read.

Keenan was released on August 24th, 1990 and his account of his captivity, An Evil Cradling, was published in 1992 and a novel Turlough about O’Carolan, the 17th century blind Irish harpist, was published in 2001.

Books By Brian Keenan Include:

• An Evil Cradling – 1993
• Between Extremes: A Journey Beyond Imagination – 1999
• Turlough – 2001
• Four Quarters of Light: An Alaskan Journey – 2004

Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.

Dick Warner is a writer, broadcaster and environmentalist. He has travelled extensively all over the world but is probably best known for his explorations of his own country. His television series ‘Wa
terways’ was a voyage of discovery through Ireland’s rivers, lakes and canals and in the series ‘Voyage’ he went to sea and made a circumnavigation of the island in a steel ketch. He has a weekly column in the ‘Examiner’ newspaper and is a regular contributor to a number of magazines. He lives on a smallholding in rural County Kildare with his wife, two children and assorted livestock.

Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.