Irish Family History

RTÉ (Ireland’s national TV and radio broadcaster) has announced that as part of its new season it will be launching some new programmes that will be of interest to family historians and genealogists.  All the following programmes will be on RTÉ 1  this autumn:

•  Who Do You Think You Are? - genealogy professionals go back in time helping six Irish celebrities to trace their roots: Ardal O’Hanlon (comedian and Dougal in Father Ted), Charlie Bird, Joe Duffy, Dana Rosemary Scallon, Pamela Flood and Linda Martin.

• Cromwell in Ireland - Presented by Dr Micheál O Siochru of TCD this three part series uses expert interviews, battle recreations and CGI imagery to recreate and reanalyse the devastating impact made on Ireland by Oliver Cromwell in the space of 9 months in the late 17th century

• Where Was Your Family During the Famine? - Journalist John Waters, economist Eddie Hobbs and model Jasmine Guinness, set out to find the answer to a question lost in time: what happened to their family during the famine?  Mixing genealogy with popular history, this ambitious production offers a dynamic new perspective on this most significant period in Irish history through the personal quest of our subjects

• Blood of the Irish - tracks the origins of the Irish people from east Africa, through the Mediterranean basin and on to central Europe.  Mingling history and cutting edge genealogical science, this RTÉ documentary is presented by Diarmuid Gavin

• Death or Canada - this new two part documentary series for RTÉ television explores a fascinating sidebar of the infamous Black ‘47.  When thousands of Irish emigrants were exiled en-masse by famine, the ensuing deluge almost swamped the new city of Toronto. Thirty thousand refugees invaded a city of 20,000 people, then just a decade old.  This documentary follows the progress of a new archaelogical dig as it reopens this forgotten story from the Great Famine.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Genealogy News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.