An Irish Weekend in Paris by Carol Drinkwater

 

The courtyard of the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris

                                            

In the above photo my husband, Michel Noll, is surveying the grounds at the Irish Cultural Centre, 5 rue des Irlandais, 75005, Paris. On the lovely summer evening of 28th May 2026, the centre was preparing to host a drinks party to celebrate the inauguration of Michel's first Irish Documentary Film Festival in Paris, DocÉire. 

Here is the link for DocÉire:   https://www.ecransdesmondes.org/doceire-2026/

This was my first visit to the Irish Cultural Centre and it was a revelation to me. It is a marvellous address - and you can reserve rooms to stay there although, unfortunately, it was fully booked when I tried to make a reservation for us. The Centre Culturel Irlandais, the CCI, (or ICC in English), is Ireland's cultural flagship in Europe.  It's a whopping piece of real estate in the heart of the 5th arrondissement in Paris, a five-minute walk from the Panthéon in this lively and historic area of the capital. It is also five minutes in the opposite direction to the splendid Jardin du Luxembourg. We much appreciated the park's proximity. It gave us perfect shade beneath centenarian trees during the warm weekend.

The CCI premises with its large grounds was purchased to house the Irish College. The Irish College began as a small group of founding members at the University of Paris. Louis XIV granted the Irish community its first permanent home in the city in 1677 on the rue des Carmes at the Collège des Lombards. In 1769, the college prefect Laurence Kelly acquired a townhouse with quite substantial grounds on the rue du Coeval Vert. This, after major refurbishments, became the new College des Irlandais, providing accommodation for both lay and clerical students from 1776 onwards. The Irish priests stayed on in residence at the College des Lombards.

Back home in English-controlled Ireland, during the reign of James Charles Stuart, known as King James VI (Scotland) and King James 1(England), the harsh Penal Laws: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_laws_(Ireland), which included severe restrictions on education for Catholics, meant that learning centres abroad became an imperative. A lifeline. The Penal Laws barred Catholics from political office and military service. Catholic Church property was transferred to the Anglican Church, Catholic masses in public were forbidden and a tax was imposed for non-attendance at Anglican services. The Penal Laws also confiscated the lands of Catholic landowners and expelled Catholic clergy from Ireland under pain of death. These super harsh laws meant that Irish Bishops were obliged to send their student priests out of Ireland for their ecclesiastical education. It was the expatriate seminarians who established the first Irish Colleges across Europe.

By the end of the 18th century, there were 34 centres across western and central Europe and they were known collectively as Irish Colleges, thriving in cities as distant as Prague, Lisbon, Madrid, Antwerp, Bohemia. The Irish College in Paris was the mother ship.  It held great influence in France and Ireland and was a beacon to all the other colleges. And how enterprising of the Catholic Irish with help from the French establishment and royalty to create these learning centres. 

During the Franco-Prussian war ( July 19, 1870 - May 10, 1871) the Irish College in Paris was converted into a hospital, offering board and medical care to three hundred French soldiers. 

After World War II, in 1945, the premises served the United States army as a shelter for displaced persons claiming US citizenship. 

At the end of 1945, the Poles established a seminary in the college and they remained there till 1997 when restoration work began.

In 2000, the Irish government announced funding of 14.5 million euros to create at the college a major cultural and educational centre in the heart of Europe that would offer, provide, a vision and profile of the personality of Ireland. The centre was inaugurated in 2002.

Today, there are two libraries within the complex. One is a Médiatèque and the other is the Old Library, which houses some 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. The Old Library can be visited by appointment. There is also the St Patrick chapel, named after the patron saint of Ireland. (Patrick, by the way, studied here in Cannes over on the l'île Saint Honorat, one of the Isles des Lérins.)

   The St Patrick Chapel

                                                                   

When Michel announced his intention to hold the first Irish documentary film festival in Paris, it was to the Cultural Centre he was directed. They put him in touch with a nearby small independent cinema, Les trois Luxembourg, who happily agreed to host the five-day event. Seven Irish documentaries were screened over the long weekend of May 28 to June 2. Each film was followed by a debate held in both French and English. Throughout the festival, all films were subtitled in French. 

On the Sunday morning - the only screenings in Gaelic - we watched three short documentaries.  The only Gaelic I speak are the few words remembered from my childhood taught to me by my late mother, Phyllis McCormack. It was a delight though to inhale the beauty of the language in the short docs even if I could not entirely follow the dialogue, except by reading the subtitles!

The seven full-length films were all very different and ranged in subject matter from modern-day Irish issues to historical themes. In many instances the directors, a handful of the cream of Irish documentary filmmakers, were present to participate in the after-screening debates which were lively, thought-provoking and great fun. The weekend felt like a true celebration of yet another branch of the arts the Irish excel at. 

I was blessed with five English and Irish friends who travelled over from London and Cork to support us. We enjoyed late night dinners together beneath the stars after the films and discussions. Le Select, the very elegant American Bar and Brasserie opened in Montparnasse in 1923, is one of my personal favourites. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Jean Marais and Picasso were all frequent diners there.

The subjects on screen gave our guests and friends plenty to debate over delicious food. Ireland in, if not all of its extraordinary aspects, then certainly a wide variety of points of view. From a portrait of an IRA militant - was she a terrorist, heroine or a young woman radicalised? - to, on a lighter note, beating the Irish Lotto system, and many more touching and stimulating stories.

If you are interested in making a trip to Paris for the second festival of DocÉire, it will be held in the spring of 2027, again in Paris and again at Les Trois Luxembourg cinema, 67, rue Monsieur Le Prince, 75006, Paris. A bit later this year, keep an eye on the site www.ecransdesmondes.org for next year's details. The films are already promising to be fascinating.

Given that we were not able to find lodging at the ICC, I booked us instead into the Hôtel Madeleine de Senlis, 7 - 9 rue Malebranche, 75005, Paris. I wasn't acquainted with this small hotel before. It was  recommended to us by Rosetta from the Irish Cultural Centre. Thank you, Rosetta, we will certainly be returning to this lovely hostelry, packed with history. Walk through its doors and you are immediately transported to a XIXth century Parisian salon. Whether Marcel Proust, Georges Sand, La Comtesse de Ségur among other nineteenth century luminaries really met here and debated in this salon, I don't know, but the welcome is stylish and delivers with grace the echoes of a lost literary Saint-Germain.

Outside our hotel, on the small section of the rue Malebranche that is pedestrian only, another inaugural event was taking place. Throughout the Saturday and Sunday a short story/novella festival was being held. It seemed fitting given that Proust had crossed these cobbles, although his most acclaimed work was a little longer than a novella!

 

Here is Michel during a break from his documentary film festival duties. He is sitting in the shade at the Luxembourg Gardens reading Le Monde. This stay we didn't have time but while in Paris the gardens are well worth a longer exploration. Aside from sitting, relaxing and just drinking in the beauty of the remarkable trees, there is the L'Orangerie, La Fontaine Médicis and then stroll about until you come face to face with the statue of Charles Baudelaire.

So, a long weekend in Paris never disappoints, does it? Especially if there is a fascinating Irish documentary film festival to draw you to the city. We sincerely hope to see some of you next year.

My latest published novel is ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Summer-Provence-olives-Margolyes/dp/1805462768/ref=rvi_d_sccl_2/523-8207767-4555705?pd_rd_w=OUVEN&content-id=amzn1.sym.d56e60fb-87bc-405a-a95d-c5e322a9b3d9&pf_rd_p=d56e60fb-87bc-405a-a95d-c5e322a9b3d9&pf_rd_r=S5XXWDCB7DK7ES2JH56J&pd_rd_wg=Kz4Ey&pd_rd_r=b462c20a-21c2-4626-a3f0-a8ff75b79074&pd_rd_i=1805462768&psc=1

To be published in Spring 2027 and ready to preorder now is my next: THE GIRL FROM MARSEILLE.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Marseille-Carol-Drinkwater-ebook/dp/B0GL9L3GBH/ref=rvi_d_sccl_5/523-8207767-4555705?pd_rd_w=PZdf6&content-id=amzn1.sym.d56e60fb-87bc-405a-a95d-c5e322a9b3d9&pf_rd_p=d56e60fb-87bc-405a-a95d-c5e322a9b3d9&pf_rd_r=6CF5VJA1TRTZX8GX06Q9&pd_rd_wg=yjs7D&pd_rd_r=f96e03bc-69fa-4bf2-be9c-7a4d1fff49e0&pd_rd_i=B0GL9L3GBH&psc=1

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Have a wonderful summer

Carol

The Fairy Visions of Richard Dadd by Miranda Miller

I’m looking forward to the launch, or rather relaunch, of my novel on June 30th. It was first published by Peter Owen in 2013. When I was writing this novel I was deeply impressed by Dadd’s heroic determination to carry on painting and drawing throughout his long incarceration. The doctors in the Bethlem Hospital, or Bedlam, as it was known to generations of Londoners, recognised Dadd’s talent and even collected his paintings and drawings. Much of his work has probably has been lost or destroyed but it is perhaps more surprising that we have as much as we do. It is only very recently that the art of the mentally ill has been widely respected. In my novel Dr Hood, the Resident Physician in the hospital, discusses his work with his friend Haydon, the Steward:

  

“ ‘ Do you think he is a great artist?’

  ‘You are a better judge of art than I. But I believe his work is spoiled by an excess of fantasy. Art must improve us and only an artist who is decent and self-controlled and reasonable can produce truly great work - Charles Eastlake, for example, who gives us such charming and educational scenes and also played a practical role as Keeper of the National Gallery. Yet there is interest in Dadd’s work, Morison has just sent me five pounds for some drawings. I had to return the money, for his work must stay inside our hospital.’“

  

   In my novel, Richard Dadd himself doubts the worth of his own art:

   

“All my life I have been trying to reach those heights, to make just one painting that will be worth looking at after I die. Of course I have failed, my whole life has been a catastrophe, I have betrayed that original vision and often fear that the doctors here only humour me when they praise my work. How could great or even good art come out of Bedlam?”

       

In 1877, after Dadd had been transferred to Broadmoor, a journalist described him as “A recluse doing the honour of his modest unpretending abode; a pleasant visaged old man with a long and flowing snow white beard, with mild blue eyes that beam benignly  through spectacles when in conversation.”

                                                   The Child’s problem. Richard Dadd (1857)

   

Dadd gave this strange and sinister drawing to his Head Keeper, Charles Neville, whose great grandson gave it to the Tate in 1955.

Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde’s friend and literary executor, was an early admirer of Dadd’s work. 

The flight out of Egypt Richard Dadd (1849-50)

Sacheverell Sitwell found The Flight Out of Egypt in the picture frame department of the Army and Navy stores and bought it. It was then bought by Tate Britain in 1947.

Siegfried Sassoon became friendly with three of Dadd’s great nephews, Stephen, Edmund and Julian, during the First World War. Two of the brothers were killed in the war but the third brother, Julian, survived the war although, sadly, he later committed suicide. Siegfried Sassoon presented The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, which is reproduced on the cover of my novel,  to Tate Britain "in memory of his friend and fellow officer Julian Dadd, a grandnephew of the artist, and of his [Julian's] two brothers [Stephen Gabriel and Edmund] who gave their lives in the First World War” It was first exhibited in 1935.

Richard Dadd’s reputation has soared as attitudes to mental illness have changed. As Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian (Wed 17 Jun 2015) : 

“We are transfixed by Dadd’s fantastical paintings not because he had a mental illness, but because they are nothing like the leaden Victorian art of the day.”

This summer there will be an exhibition of Dadd’s work at the Royal Academy:


Richard Dadd

 
Beyond Bedlam

25 July - 25 October 2026

The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries | Burlington House

 

On Thursday July 23 at 7.30 pm I will be giving an illustrated talk about my novel and how I came to write it at The Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Holborn Library, 32-38 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PA.

. 

www.mirandamiller.info

The "Saracen Children" who were actually horses. Elizabeth Chadwick on the detail gremlins that change history.

 

I am working on a novel about Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt.  It's contracted but as yet untitled.  Currently I am editing the work and checking my historical details and it's proving to be very interesting, not least because double checks on some of the historical details in what appear on the surface to be solid academic works, turn out to be problematic when one digs deeper. 

I was reading Anthony Goodman's biography of John of Gaunt while writing my first draft and came across a mention dated to 1351 of clothing being provided for "Sigo and Nakok" who were two "Saracen children" attached to the household of either John of Gaunt or Edward of Woodstock when they were living in the same household.  "Saracen" covers a lot of ground and could refer to Iberian, Middle Eastern or North African children.  Such children were often regarded as exotic parts of the trappings of a late medieval household.  In 1351, John of Gaunt (who was never called that in his lifetime), was eleven years old.

I decided it would be interesting to include these Saracen children in the story and one in particular as a background character in John's household when he was older. 

Recently, during a coffee break, I began digging to see if I could find anything else about them beyond Goodman's quote, and that was when I had to stop and sit back. 

From what I have been able to glean:

Nowhere in primary sources are "Saracen children" mentioned and it would seem to be a modern error.  Checking Goodman's biography of John of Gaunt I was able to look up the two sources he cites as evidence for his statement. 
His first source is The Calendar of the Household of the King.  Yes, it absolutely does mention Sigo and Nakok, but it's on the account for the stables and makes very clear that the two named individuals are horses, not people!  Sigo is a destrier (warhorse) and Nakok a courser (hunting or fast horse).  The amounts of cloth cited are in keeping with the amounts required to trap out a destrier (Sigo gets the larger amount) and a slighter hunter or racer.  Both names appear on the accounts for the stables.

The other source cited by Goodman is Hoccleve, an 1897 version of a fifteenth century poetical text.  It contains no mention whatsoever of "Saracen children" and is a complete red herring and non-source.  It doesn't mention John of Gaunt at all.  Perhaps it's a late night error.

The name Sigo (Sayghu) can be traced to Magrehbi/Andalusian patterns of horse naming and means "Bright One/Fine One/Swift One.  It's not a classic Arabic human personal name. He is given the most cloth for his coverings. Nakok (Naquq) means a sound such as "Chatter", "Tap" or "Click" and could have been a reference to a sound the horse made, or perhaps the sound required to jolly him along. He receives less cloth for his trappings. 

The bottom line is that Sigo and Nakok were NOT children but horses - very likely swanky Iberian ones.  So now I have two horse names I can use in the narrative, but will now use other attendants whose names and roles are congruent with my second-dig research. 

I have said before that digging will give you one story and double-digging may lead in quite different directions.  Like the occasion I discovered that Eleanor of Aquitaine did not have a brother called Joscelin, who was in fact the illegitimate half brother of Adeliza of Louvain, second queen of Henry II, but historians have made assumptions and then copied each other and set the error in stone.
This is the post on my own website blog about that particular discovery. Eleanor of Aquitaine's non-brother

The Bloomsbury Set at Charleston by Judith Allnatt

I recently had the opportunity to visit Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex,  which was home to some members of the Bloomsbury group including Vanessa Bell who was a painter and the sister of Virginia Woolf. 

Both sisters were fragile. In 1911 Vanessa had a mental breakdown following a miscarriage and was nursed by Virginia. Virginia, of course, suffered from depression and was tragically to take  her own life in 1941. 

In this photo of Vanessa, which sits on the mantelpiece in her studio, one can clearly see the family likeness, not only physically but in the pensive expression, both sisters having rather soulful eyes. Virginia and Leonard Woolf had a home nearby, Monks House at Firle. They were playfully referred to as 'the Woolves' by the Charleston household. 

Vanessa settled at Charleston in 1916 with her two sons, her art critic husband Clive Bell, the painter Duncan Grant and the writer David Garnett. (Grant and Garnett were lovers). Vanessa and Clive Bell had an open marriage, reflecting the freedoms espoused by the Bloomsbury group who were searching for new ways of living and loving. Vanessa had previously had an affair in France with Roger Fry (whom Virginia was also in love with) and later had a  relationship at Charleston with Duncan Grant. 

I was interested in the complex relationships playing out within the group and wanted to find out what drew them to Charleston.  They were a fairly affluent set, at home in London or Paris, whereas Charleston was an isolated rundown farmhouse with no hot water, electricity or telephone. After reading around this, two main factors seem to be involved. The group perhaps wanted a secluded place where they could feel free to pursue their unconventional art and lifestyle but also, at the height of the First World War, men were either conscripted or had to find 'Work of National Importance'  such as farming; Grant and Garnett were able to do the latter living at Charleston.

Visiting the house one feels as if its twentieth century inhabitants have just popped outside for a moment. Everywhere there is evidence of their artistic life. Many paintings, mainly portraits, hang in every room,  but also doors, tables, mantlepieces and cupboards are painted with figures or decoration. The studio, where Duncan and Vanessa painted side by side, is still scattered with paintbrushes and oils and, in a parlour, fire bricks have been  built out onto the hearth in a DIY effort to draw heat into what must have been a freezing room in winter. 

Charleston also houses a collection of dinner plates commissioned by Kenneth Clark the art historian. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were commissioned to decorate them with paintings of famous women. There are four sets of twelve comprising famous Queens, famous beauties, famous writers and famous performers, plus two portraits of the artists themselves. The slant towards the arts is noticeable here -  no mathematicians such as Émilie Du Châtelet or scientists such as Marie Curie. Although the artists were avante garde, perhaps their view of gender was still  influenced to some extent by the assumptions and prejudices of the time.

One also cannot help but question whether the complicated sexual relationships brought freedom equally to both genders. Duncan Grant was the father of Vanessa's third child, Angelica. However, Angelica was not told of this until she was seventeen and had grown up believing that Clive Bell was her father. In her 

memoir 'Deceived by Kindness', she describes the unease she felt as a child, created by an awareness  that the adults were keeping something from her. It also appears that neither man really took on the responsibilities of fathering and that this lack affected her  profoundly. 

On top of this complicated emotional situation, in her twenties Angelica was pursued by David Garnett, (her father Duncan Grant's one time lover).  Angelica, inexperienced and full of doubts was nonetheless persuaded by the older man to marry him, much against the wishes of both Vanessa and Clive Bell.  David Garnett's comment years before on seeing the newborn Angelica was : "I think of marrying it. When she is 20, I shall be 46 - will it be scandalous?" Presumably at the time it was seen as a flippant joke but one wonders whether the whole idea had its roots in jealousy, perhaps over Duncan's relationship with Vanessa or even because of a rejection by Vanessa of Grant's own advances. (Angelica writes that " . .  he had proposed bed to Vanessa and been rejected" and that his purpose in marrying her daughter, "at least in part, was to inflict pain on Vanessa".)

As well as giving a beautifully rendered account of life at Charleston, the memoir shines a strong light on some of the members of the iconic Bloomsbury Set: their personalities, relationships and all-too-human failings. 

 

For those interested in finding out more, "Deceived by Kindness"  by Angelica Garnett is published by Pimlico, Penguin Random House