So many fantastic talks on the second day with some highlights including Cormac Moore on the Irish Boundary Commission, subject of his latest book, Alexander Morrison on 'Beyond the 'Great Game' - boundaries and border-making in the Russian conquest of Central Asia' and Gabriel Cooney speaking about Crossing the boundaries between life and death in prehistory drawing on aspects of his book Death in Irish prehistory. All of these were perfectly keyed in to our 2026 theme of Boundaries.

But we also had Sam McBride and Mark Hennessy discussing the not uncontroversial topic of 'Could Nigel Farage succeed where Pádraig Pearse failed?' chaired by Festival co-founder Simon Kingston as well as Zoe Reid, Keeper of Manuscripts at the National Archives, speaking about the publication of 1926 census, the first in the Irish Free State (see image below). And many others!