Yesterday was Independence Day in the US - to mark the occasion why not listen to 'Declaring Independence: America 1776, Ireland 1919’, a talk from last year's Festival given by Dan Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to the US?

Alternatively, you could read this fascinating article by historian Damian Shiels, re-posted from his archive, about John Dunlap, the printer of the Declaration of Independence, who was born in Strabane, Co Tyrone. The image below is from Damian's website.

And in the week that Micheál Martin became Taoiseach, Festival contributor Ronan McGreevy looked into Martin's family history in an article in the Irish Times. Micheál Martin has himself attended the West Cork History Festival twice, last year chairing a number of sessions for us.

And finally something completely different - an online exhibition about Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray. The physical exhibition, at the Bard Graduate Gallery in New York, opened in February and was due to finish this week, but has obviously been closed since lockdown. Gray (pictured below) was a pioneering modernist, designer, architect, painter and photographer, whose life spanned nearly a century - she was born in Wexford in 1898 and died in Paris in 1976.