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Episode Notes
This week: The story of Wexford-born communist May O'Callaghan; and The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement.
Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals
The 'Hotel Lux', on Tverskaya Street in Central Moscow, was no ordinary hotel. In the 1920s and 30s, it served as a home to a diverse group of people, exiles or émigrés from their home countries, with one important thing in common —they were all committed communists. This "living quarters of the world revolution," played host to some of the most influential figures in the communist movement, including a young Ho Chi Minh and Tito.
A new book explores the lives of some of the lesser-known figures who passed through its hallways – including one Irish resident, who’s never previously been written about in any detail. It’s an international story, about people united by the dream of communist global revolution. As we’ll hear, it’s also a love story, which spans generations.
The book is called Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals, it's published by Footnote Press.
The author Dr Maurice Casey, historian at Queen’s University Belfast, who joins Myles in studio. The book began life as a chapter in Maurice's PHD Thesis on ‘Irish Women and International Communism’, where he discovered the story of May O’Callaghan, from County Wexford, whose life is explored in this interview.
Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement
In 1965, 49 years after his execution, Roger Casement's remains were returned to Ireland, and laid to rest with full state honors in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery. A man once branded a traitor by the British Crown, Casement’s life was one of intrigue, humanitarianism, and rebellion - from his groundbreaking work exposing the atrocities of colonialism in the Congo and the Amazon; to his involvement in the Easter Rising.
Myles is joined by Casement’s most recent biographer, Roland Phillips – whose book Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement was published by Bodley Head earlier this year.