Ellen McWilliams
@EllenMackers
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Book: RESTING PLACES: ON WOUNDS, WAR AND THE IRISH REVOLUTION @BooksBtp West Cork to Blame for Any Views Lecturer in English, University of Exeter
Bristol via Co. Cork
Joined May 2013
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RESTING PLACES: ON WOUNDS, WAR AND THE IRISH REVOLUTION is now available from and I'm hugely grateful for the support of activists and writers I admire so much – and to Beyond the Pale Books for being an independent publisher in a league of its own 1/
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My family are hoping for a Reunited Ireland -- Son of Cromwell (East Anglian Fens...) Marries Granddaughter of Anti-Treaty Irish Republicans...
It could be worse -- we could be boring.
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A joy to be back and forth home to Ireland in recent weeks (North & South).
One of my seven-year old’s favourite things about Ireland is the Tayto Crisp. He was excited to take on the Partition Tayto Taste Test.
Verdict: ‘They taste kind of the same’…
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I hope Irish writing moves on from the ‘Trinity Thing’ soon. I’m tired of explaining to my English students that not everyone goes to Trinity — and surely they can’t all be so miserable there all of the time...?
Looking forward to the ‘NUI School’ — elite without being elitist.
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My father died last week.
Thank you to our family, neighbours, and friends in West Cork for such immense kindness in recent days.
A rare and special people.
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Writing an essay about Maeve Brennan, Brendan Behan, and Irish Republican Afterlives in New York that I'm hopeful will confound the usual paradigms.
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Fulbright Anniversary has just passed.💚
If I can help anyone thinking of applying to the Irish-US Programme in the Humanities, I will do so gladly.
I was rejected, shortlisted, and then miraculously successful so I did learn something along the way...
Adventure of a Lifetime.
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It's been a long road, but my collection of essays about the unending grief of the Irish 1920s – RESTING PLACES: ON WOUNDS, WAR, AND THE IRISH REVOLUTION – has found its safe house in Belfast's Beyond the Pale Books. It's not so much a Book as my Heart and Soul on a Platter.
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I write about British colonial violence, Irish Republican resistance, war, the legacies of atrocity, and tragedy in the back field in my book now in the world.
And the joy of becoming a mother at 39.
I wouldn’t change anything.
Though I miss the early days on certain days.
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This weekend this Granddaughter of the West Cork Irish Republican Army will remember the loss of my husband's Granduncle Harry McWilliams at Ypres, 1915.
May he rest in peace.
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My 7 year old is Irish and English and loves a parade.
He supported both teams yesterday.
He knows I have written a book — a book written out of love for him.
Happy St. Patrick's Day ❤️💚❤️
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So much of my academic writing life has been dedicated to Maeve Brennan -- for reasons I explore in what might be called (for better or worse...) my forthcoming collection of essays.
Here I am walking in the shadow of her ghost -- Granddaughter of the Revolution.
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Having spent years carrying out research into the story of the Irish in Britain I thought I would have all the answers for my small son.
But by his reaction to this evening’s playlist, it turns out I could have just introduced him to The Pogues.
Endings and beginnings…
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A launch would not be right for my Book of Sorrow – in the coming weeks, I will be giving a series of quiet readings at University College Cork, Boston College-Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast, and the Irish Literary Society in London.
Travelling with Sister Book for courage❤️
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Hugely grateful to Queen’s University Belfast for such a warm and supportive welcome last night.
Always happy to be reminded of what a truly fantastic city Belfast is.
Walked feet off self ❤️
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Happy Birthday, Edna O'Brien 💚
From Country Girls and Scandalous Women everywhere
‘With the holy water and the red rowan tree bright and instinct with life, I thought that ours indeed was a land of shame, a land of murder, and a land of strange, throttled, sacrificial women.’
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Thank you so much to
@EnglishUCC
for the warm welcome home and to Stephen Travers
@MiamiShowband
for such powerful and moving words.
Turns out you should always meet your Heroes.
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I've always been wary of memoir, but I wrote the opening paragraph of a new academic book today: 'Hauntings: Trauma and Narrative Repair in Irish Women's Lifewriting'.
Bowen, Brennan, O'Brien, Boland, O'Faolain, McCafferty, and a round-up of contemporaries.
It started here.
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Spending the weekend of the Coronation making final edits to a book about Irish Republican power, loss, and grief. It’s also a book about the charge of quiet and why the voices of liberal, middle class feminism leave most of us behind.
Above all it’s a hymn to my parents.
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Writing this book came at a cost, but as the coming weeks will show — and as history proves — writers can have a significant role in Truth & Reconciliation. Also, the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ is not over. For some of us it’s just beginning.
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The West Belfast welcome was immense. I never imagined in the course of two days I’d have encounters with Monica McWilliams, David Adams, Reverend Harold Good, and a host of other Peacemakers.
I’ll carry their words in my pocket.
@FeileBelfast
Great talk by
@EllenMackers
on the long term effects of ethno political violence in a family and in a community, which has given people much to think about.
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Joe Horgan, in today's Irish Post: 'What Ellen McWilliams does in this book is remind us, especially now, that if we are to take sides we can only ever take the side of humanity. Do yourself a favour and buy and read this brave, moving book'.
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Bristol has been my home for 25 years and is the city I love most so I’m grateful to the Bristol Post for taking such an enthusiastic interest in book. Readings incoming at the University of Bristol, the Bristol Irish Festival, and the Bristol Radical History Group Festival 💚
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Still fascinated by the publishers who were drawn in because my book was full of 'an Irishwoman's pain and rage' -- but it was the wrong kind of pain and rage and could I rewrite it to make it more like the following commercially successful titles.... ....
Me: No
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As a Grandchild of the West Cork Anti-Treaty IRA I am doing what I can to support Neale Jagoe (now my friend…) even though the historiography remains bitterly contested. A story of descendants of an atrocity trying to move ‘beyond victim and perpetrator’.
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Thank you so much to Frank Fagan, a historian of the Irish Civil War who is in all ways brave, for this heartwarming review of Resting Places 💚
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When my father died in June I postponed all book events — with the exception of
@FeileBelfast
because it’s what he would have wanted and it’s a very special festival. Thank you so much for the kind invitation — a true honour. I’ll be talking about the legacies of Civil War.
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Came home to news of an
@Soc_of_Authors
Authors' Foundation Award to support works in progress – a great surprise and one that gives me courage. The ten year old in this picture, who would never have dared admit that she wanted to write, thanks you from the heart.
#SoAGrants
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Proof that book is in the world…
Field Day Anthology (Volume 5) providing support 💚
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Heartfelt thanks for the remembering of Thady — storyteller, folklorist, horse whisperer, and trotting horse champion. And thank you so much to the Ballabuidhe-Dunmanway Race Committee for signing his book of condolences. It would have meant so much to him.
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'The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed. It is combat against ourselves, the author; one of us must be vanquished or die.'
Hélène Cixous
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An essay about my Cumann na mBan Great Grandmother, Ellen, will be in the world soon and has found the perfect home. Thank you to the publishing visionaries who give families like mine a voice.
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Thank you so much
@FeileBelfast
for such a warm West Belfast welcome today. A wonderful audience and an experience I’ll never forget. 💚
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Amazing to see Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution profiled in today’s Irish Times in a wonderful article by
@stagedreaction
on a new wave of Irish writing.
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My family background meets all the criteria for historical/intergenerational trauma and I constantly doubt myself as a parent. But our small boy laughs in his sleep every other night (I know this because he sleeps in our bed). I think I'll take a day off from the self-punishment.
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I spent the last decade diving into the archives of Irish women writers and today a reviewer kindly noticed the importance of archives in my own writing.
Favourite encounter...?
Maeve Brennan's handwritten note: 'Exile, How Are You'
With thanks to the University of Delaware.
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I've spent the past few days pouring my heart into an essay about my Cumann na mBan Great Grandmother, Ellen.
With infinite appreciation to Liz Gillis
@lizgillis191623
and Margaret Ward
@MargaretWard1
.
The women who wrote the books.
Photo Credit/Thank you so much
@MikeTQUB
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At the end of this long week this seems like a good moment to say a heartfelt thank you to Dr. Andy Bielenberg for standing by me through the difficult delivery of this book. He proceeds with care and love around our people. Thank you, Andy.
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I finally uncovered my Great-Grandmother's Cumann na mBan History and it is extraordinary.
Years of courage and conviction -- she set up a hospital for soldiers that was sacked and commandeered by the Free State Army during the Civil War.
Another Ellen -- May She Rest in Peace.
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Thank you to RTÉ Culture for publishing an extract from the penultimate chapter of Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution.
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Thank you to the Southern Star – a paper of the Irish Revolution – for a skin-touch sensitive review:
'Tackles tragic events fearlessly, with passion, empathy and courage, creating the potential for understanding, healing and forgiveness across cultural and religious divides'.
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Grisly secrets of the ‘disappeared’ of Anglo-Irish war uncovered by research
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The last word on the Irish Revolution goes to Frank O'Connor: ‘And anything that ever happened me after I never felt the same about again’.
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Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution by Ellen McWilliams
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The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798 is a work of radical, generous-hearted bravery that gave me the determination to finish the book – I am honoured to have such a Sister❤️
This book is one of a kind and I can't recommend it highly enough.
We joke that it's The Ghost Limb's sister book. The journey the other way around.
The antidote to shallow culture wars. A deep reckoning with intergenerational trauma & reconciliation.
Go well Resting Places x
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Hugely grateful to John Manley at The Irish News for asking such thoughtful and sensitive questions about the painful subjects of Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution
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Next week I will finally get to meet Neale Jagoe, the Grandson of a survivor of the atrocity I write about in Resting Places. He has been a wonderful friend to me and to the book. The Jagoes of Dunmanway were great friends to my Grandfather and here we are again 100 years later.
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Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of Maeve Brennan. Fearless, full of feeling, and always on the side of the outsider. Her scalpel-sharp algorithm for Christmas:
‘Christmas. The insiders bolster themselves against their own disappointment by inviting outsiders’.
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Stephen Travers offered immense support and words of encouragement when I was struggling to keep faith in book.
Thank you
@MiamiShowband
The emergence of a truly great, courageous and unique Irish writer; Ellen McWilliams’s book explores the intergenrational impact of violence – The Irish News
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'Ireland loves its strong women, as long as they’re dead or they never lived at all.'
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So glad to be landed in Cork, the home of it all ❤️
‘There was a time when I wondered if the tears would ever stop falling, a mourning for who we might have been if somehow everything had been different’.
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After a rough start to the launch-not-launch of my Book of SorrowI have been invited to bring book home to West Cork next year. A gathering of families hurt by the history. There will be no press release. Ground up reconciliation by the people who matter most.
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After the long, slow writing of Resting Places, having the support of Stephen Travers
@MiamiShowband
means everything – thank you, Stephen ❤️
I was privileged to get an advance copy of this extraordinary book, 'Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution', which is on general sale now. Anyone with an interest in the past, present and future of our shared island should read it.
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Nothing about writing and sending Resting Places into the world has been easy so the extraordinary warmth and insight of yesterday’s audience at Bristol’s Radical History Festival is something I won’t forget in a hurry. Thank you💚
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Work in progress now includes the story of my Grandfather who, at age 16, was taught to handle a gun by the West Cork Brigade of the IRA, and was left in charge of Black & Tan prisoners, rifle in hand.
He died when I was 9.
My final memory is of making him a cup of Complan.
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Thank you to
@IrishLitSoc
and
@MyICCLondon
for a warm London welcome last night. Final stop for now… And to Andy Bielenberg, Charles Duff, and Neale Jagoe for making this book complete.
Most of all to
@BooksBtp
for being such a force for good in publishing.
That’ll do, Book.
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This is a review of a lifetime from a scholar who knows exactly what’s at stake in excavating the most painful hidden histories of the Irish Revolution — thank you for being there first and last, Linda.
If those fields could talk…
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A grey morning redeemed by a wonderful surprise in the post: powerful, moving, and every essay is an education.
Thank you so much
@CecileArchives
@dfarchives
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I have no photograph of my Grandfather, Daniel McCarthy — he died 17 years before I was born. He was a talented boxer and trotting horse racer. He spoke Irish and English and was capable of a rhetorical wallop when called for…
I have no photograph, but I do have a letter... 💚
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‘I have always done my best not to believe in ghosts.'
A brief article on the genesis of Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution for RTE Culture
Ellen McWilliams on a 'broken prayer for a most painful history' via
@rte
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It's easy to become a ubiquitous irritant in the book world, but my publisher
@BooksBtp
is a radical-ethical not-for profit microprint run by brilliant academics emeritus, Bill Rolston, Mike Tomlinson, and Robbie McVeigh. So... RESTING PLACES 1/
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Thank you so much
@westcorkhisfest
for publishing a truly personal essay on the story of Resting Places. Thoughts on the pain of Civil War, the Decade of Centenaries, ethical remembering, radical empathy, and the meaning of intergenerational trauma.
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On Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution...
'A remarkable book; brave, eloquent, empathetic and eminently readable' — thank you so much to Sue Leonard in today's Irish Examiner.
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A shared event with my friend Neale Jagoe, whose family fled West Cork during the Dunmanway Massacre. F. Scott Fitzgerald insists: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function'.
Our next Irish Studies seminar on Monday 13 Nov is Dr Ellen McWilliams (Exeter), on '”Forgetful Remembrance”: The Dunmanway Massacre of April 1922'. All welcome in-person or online. Register at:
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I had a fantastic day at the Bristol Radical History Festival
@BrisRadHis
@CUBECINEMA
Fascinating panels and a wonderful audience. Thank you so much for having me. 💚
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Thank you so much for reading and for sharing these thoughts, Margaret – less a book, more my heart and soul on a platter.
Enthralled by this book. A meditation and more, weaving the personal, historical, literary & cultural into a profound & personal reflection on consequences of war on communities. Loved her thoughts on Cromwell! The last chapter contains an unexpected twist
@EllenMackers
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