National - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

Aubane Historical Society Book Launches, Saturday 19 April

national | history and heritage | event notice

Saturday April 12, 2008 21:37

by Aubane Historical Society

Cavalier and Roundhead:

Sir Charles Wogan: The Rescue of Princess Clementina - an adventure of the Irish Brigades (1719).
Introduced by Cathy Winch
Saturday 19 April 7.30 p.m., Teachers' Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin

Elizabeth Bowen: "Notes from Éire" - Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940-42.
Introduced by Brendan Clifford
Saturday 19 April 8.30 p.m., Teachers' Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin

Sir Charles Wogan: The Rescue of Princess Clementina - an adventure of the Irish Brigades (1719).

Charles Wogan (1685?-1754) was a member of an important Catholic family in Rathcoffey near Dublin, who spent most of his life in exile in France and Spain. A deeply sympathetic character, twice in his life he had occasion to defeat measures taken by George the First, King of England. First he led an escape from Newgate gaol where he was awaiting trial for treason for his part in the rising of 1715; three years later he arranged the escape of a princess arrested on the orders of King George.

The princess was Clementina Sobieski, the grand-daughter of the Polish king who won the battle of Vienna against the Turks in 1683. She was engaged to be married to James Francis Edward, son of James II, the Stuart King who was driven from the British throne in 1688 and replaced by William of Orange, later followed by the Hanoverians. The latter had everything to gain by the extinction of the Stuart line and tried to prevent James from marrying, by the simple expedient of placing his fiancée under house arrest at Innsbruck as she was on her way to join him.

He did not count on Wogan who, with the help of three of his relations, officers in the Irish brigade of Dillon based in France, scooped the princess from her prison; and they galloped over the Alps in their carriage in winter to safety. Clementina and James were married soon after and their first child was to be Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Writing to Jonathan Swift in 1732, Wogan comments on history written to adorn a country with glorious tales, and on the need for an Irish history that would fulfill that purpose. His writing of the Clementina story was a step in that direction. Letters which Chevalier Wogan exchanged with Swift are reproduced in an annex to the book. Wogan's story appears here both in the original French and in translation, together with an introduction by Cathy Winch.

Elizabeth Bowen: "Notes from Éire" - Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940-42.

The story of this books starts in 1993, when extracts from Elizabeth Bowen's works were included in A North Cork Anthology, with the qualification that, though her family had property connections in the area, she could not be regarded as a North Cork, or even an Irish, writer. This caused outrage in the Dublin media and some vicious attacks on Jack Lane and Brendan Clifford, the compilers of the Anthology. There was even doubt cast on the fact that Ms Bowen spied against Ireland in the Second World War.

The upshot of that controversy was that the Aubane Historical Society traced several of Ms Bowen's secret reports, which are published here in full for the first time. For those whose would see Ms Bowen's spying as needing no defence, on the supposition that the Allied war on Germany was absolutely justified, and that Neutrals had no case, this book provides an extensive survey of international affairs in the decades before the War, ncluding De Valera's role in the League of Nations. There are also sections on Irish and European Fascism.

The book is rounded out by reproducing the polemic about Bowen, which took place between the Aubane HistoricalSociety and luminaries of the Irish Times and the Sunday
Business Post. The controversy about how to describe Ms Bowen goes to the heart of what Ireland and Irish culture is, and this book is as good a starting place as any for those who seek the middle path between the Scylla of bigoted nationalism and the Charybdis of West British globalism.

The second edition provides a further review of aspects of World War 2—the British betrayal of Poland, the American provocation of Japan, the British insistence on delaying the Second Front, and the Nuremberg Trials—in response to an indictment of Irish neutrality by Professor B. Girvin and Dr. G. Roberts.

Saturday 19 April 7.30 p.m., and 8.30 p.m. Teachers' Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin