Going to My Father’s House: a History of my Times, 7 October 2021
From Ireland to London in the 1950s, Derry in the Troubles to contemporary, deindustrialised Manchester, Joyce finds that ties of place, family and the past are difficult to break. Why do certain places continue to haunt us? What does it mean to be British after the suffering of Empire and of war? How do we make our home in a hypermobile world without remembering our pasts?
This event launches Patrick Joyce’s book Going to My Father’s House. Patrick’s parents moved from Ireland in the 1930s and made their home in west London. But they never really left the homeland. And so as he grew up among the streets of Paddington and Notting Hill and when he visited his family in Ireland, he felt a tension between notions of home, nation and belonging. Going to My Father’s House charts the historian’s attempt to make sense of these ties and to see how they manifest in a globalised world. He explores the places—the house, the street, the walls and the graves—that formed his own identity. He asks what place the ideas of history, heritage and nostalgia have in creating a sense of our selves. He concludes with a plea for a history that holds the past to account but also allows for dynamic, inclusive change.
The event will comprise a discussion between the author; the historian of gender, empire and slavery Catherine Hall; and columnist and author Madeleine Bunting.
This online public event is free and open to all. It will have live captioning and BSL interpreters.
Click here to register for this event: https://lse.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7VhZL7vdShyP8XxppJkX1Q