The Great Irish Famine

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million people died from disease or starvation after the blight and another two million left the country within the decade. There had been famines before, but not on this scale. What was it about the laws, attitudes and responses that made this one so devastating?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Cormac O'Grada No other episodes
  Professor Emeritus in the School of Economics at University College Dublin
• Niamh Gallagher No other episodes
  University Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge
• Enda Delaney No other episodes
  Professor of Modern History and School Director of Research at the University of Edinburgh

Reading list

• Atlas of the Great Irish Famine
  John Crowley, Michael Murphy and William J. Smith (eds.) (Cork University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• The Great Irish Famine: A History in Four Lives
  Enda Delaney (Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2014) Google Books →
• Ireland's Great Famine and Popular Politics
  Enda Delaney and Breandan Mac Suibhne (eds.) (Routledge, 2016) Google Books →
• The Great Irish Potato Famine
  James S. Donnelly (Sutton Publishing, 2002) Google Books →
• The Great Famine: Essays in Irish History
  R. D. Edwards and T. D. Williams (eds.) (Lilliput Press, 1995)
• The Irish Famine
  Peter Gray (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1995) Google Books →
• The Cambridge History of Ireland, Volume 3, 1730-1880. Vol. 3
  James Kelly (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Google Books →
• The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion
  Christine Kinealy (Palgrave, 2001) Google Books →
• Subjects Lacking Words? The Gray Zone of the Great Famine
  Breandan Mac Suibhne (Cork University Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Ireland's Great Famine: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
  Cormac O Grada (University College Dublin, 2006)
• Famine: A Short History
  Cormac O Grada (Princeton University Press, 2010)
• The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony 1845-1852
  Ciaran O Murchadha (Continuum, 2012) Google Books →
• The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849
  Cecil Woodham-Smith (Penguin, 1991) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0003rj1

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rj1

Auto-category: 941.5082 (History of Ireland, 19th century)