Dr Harman Murtagh, author of ‘The Irish Jacobite Army’; and Seamus O’Brien, author of ‘Carn Killare – a Forgotten Westmeath Famine Village’; with Ruth Illingworth and Dr Mary Shine Thompson, who launched the books at the Greville Arms Hotel last week. Harman’s work has been acclaimed as a major contribution to understanding of a watershed event in Irish history, played out in part in Westmeath – Mullingar, Ballymore, and decisively in Athlone. Seamus O’Brien’s reissue of his popular study of the effects of the Great Famine on the tiny hilltop settlement of Carn, opposite the historic Hill of Uisneach, has been revised and updated, but still sells at the same price as when launched 25 years ago. Both are available from Just Books in Mullingar.
