Our opening speaker at the 2018 West Cork History Festival is Professor Alvin Jackson. In the centenary year of John Redmond’s death, Professor Jackson will speak on Redmond and Carson, the two men who are the subject of his recently published book Judging Redmond and Carson (Royal Irish Academy: 2018).

Professor Jackson is a leading historian of Ireland and Britain, and has written seven books, including the Redmond and Carson publication, and The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United Kingdom 1707-2007 (OUP: 2013): he has also edited the acclaimed Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (OUP: 2017).  He has been Sir Richard Lodge Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh since 2004.