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On show at St Peter's Church, Cork, since March 2017,
'A City By The Sea' offers a whistle-stop journey through
Cork’s long and extraordinary maritime history. Curated by Turtle,
the
show is replete with colourful tales of the pirates, patriots,
emigrants, heroines, chancers and warriors who sailed
upon the Lee and beheld this majestic harbour in ages past
GENEALOGY ROADSHOW
Turtle was one of the main presenters of the Genealogy
Roadshow
series which aired on
RTE One between 2011 and
2017.
In each episode, Turtle
teamed up with two genealogists to
investigate
claims by people who
believed they have
famous or
infamous
relatives,
or that
they were
connected to a
historical
event or
long-standing
mystery.
The series was produced by Big
Mountain and inspired PBS America
to develop its own version
of the format.
THE GREAT WAR ROADSHOW
Since 2014, Turtle has toured Ireland as part of the
Paths to Freedom
and Great War
Roadshows, speaking
at events in Boyle, Sligo,
Kells, Tallaght, Clonegal,
Greystones,
Dublin City, Thurles and Cavan.
His
fellow lecturers included Myles Dungan, Joe Duffy,
John O'Keefe, Ciaran Wallace, Gordon Power & Damian Shiels.
HISTORY FESTIVAL OF IRELAND
Turtle was co-founder of the History Festival of Ireland
and curated the event in
2012 and 2013. In 2016 the event
was incorporated
into the
Festival of Writing and Ideas
at Borris House.
(Illustration by Derry Dillon)
BRIEF NOTES
Turtle frequently lends his historical
expertise
to TV documentaries
such as 'The Genealogy
Roadshow', 'Who Do You Think You Are?' and
'Wogan's Ireland', in which he pondered
the
drunkenness of the Jacobite troops
at the
battle
of the Boyne with
the late Sir Terry Wogan (above). He
co-scripted and researched the award-nominated
documentary 'John Henry Foley - Sculptor of
the Empire'. He was Resident Historian on
Newstalk Breakfast show from June to December 2013.
Turtle had been a keynote speaker at many events, including:
2017 Hinterland Kellls
2017 Festival of Writing & Ideas, Borris
2017 St Patrick's Festival, Dublin
2017 Kilkenny Whiskey Guild
2016 IBAM Chicago
2016 Cruise Europe Conference
2016 Paths to Freedom Roadshow
2016 Chicago Irish Consul - Easter 1916
2016 Transatlantic Conference
2015 Web
Summit
2015 Ireland Exhibition at Chicago's
Art Institute
2013 Poesie and Prose Literary Festival, Paris
2013 Irish Writers Festival, London
2013 St Patrick's Festival (Marsh's Library), Dublin
2012 Tall Ships Festival, Dublin,
2012 Royal Dublin Society
2012 New York & Chicago chapters, Irish Georgian
Society.
He is a guest blogger for the Irish Executives on LinkedIn,
as well as a frequent contributor
to the Discover Ireland website,
WorldIrish.com, Irish Family Names, the Wild Geese Blog and
the Gathering Ireland 2013 campaign.
He has also talked about inspirational books with
Daisy Banks of The Browser.
In 2011, he was the Ireland Fund of Monaco's Writer-in-Residence
at the Princess
Grace Irish Library.
*****
This website has been compiled in the interest of furthering
the research and study of both
local and international history.
Turtle is a best-selling
author,
historian,
public
speaker
and TV presenter
based in
Ireland. He is presently curating 'A City By The Sea', a maritime history of Cork, at
St Peter's
Church,
which the Lord Mayor of Cork City opened in March 2017.
Turtle's book 1847 - A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity & Savagery was one
of the best-selling history books in Ireland in 2016.
The Oscar-nominated film
director Lenny
Abrahamson
describes it as "vivid,
surprising, hugely
entertaining;
an unforgettable
encounter with an
extraordinary year.”
Turtle's previous books include Easter
Dawn (2015), The
Glorious
Madness
-
Tales
of the
Irish &
the
Great War (short-listed
for
Best
Irish-published
Book
of
the Year
2014) and
the award-winning Vanishing Ireland series.
Turtle is scheduled to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2018 St Patrick's
Day Festival in Savannah, Georgia,
and Charleston, North Carolina. He has
recently appeared at events such as Hinterland 2017 and the Borris Festival of
Writing and Ideas. He presented talks on his '1847' and 'Vanishing Ireland' books
at the Irish Books Arts & Music Celebration in Chicago.
Turtle is married to the novelist and PR guru Ally Bunbury, author of The Inheritance.
A past winner of Ireland's Long Haul Travel
Journalist of the Year Award, his work has
been
published in National Geographic Traveler, The Daily Beast, The
World of
Interiors,
Playboy, The
Irish Times,
The
Financial
Times,
The New York
Post,
The Australian,
Inspirato, The Guardian and Vogue Living.
Turtle is a
co-presenter of
'Genealogy
Roadshow' (RTE),
the
founder of Wistorical, an
innovative
concept for
promoting Irish
history globally, and a regular guest on Irish
radio. He also co-founded the History
Festival
of Ireland.
Turtle's books are available directly from his aStores at Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk
EASTER DAWN - THE 1916 RISING
" A beautiful and workmanlike addition
to Turtle Bunbury’s
collection of well-researched and
lavishly illustrated
coffee table history books ... a
mixture of sound
history with vivid and sometimes intimate detail."
Socialist History, April 2016.
“Possibly the best-seller of the centennial ...
the whole
story easily told and
illustrated by
a brilliant populariser.'
Books Ireland, 2015.
"A handsome hardback with many fine and rare images
...
a fine survey of Easter week 1916."
RTE Guide, 2015.
*********
THE GLORIOUS MADNESS
TALES OF THE IRISH & THE GREAT WAR
& the Great War' was short-listed for Best Irish-published
Book of the Year 2014.
"Turtle Bunbury’s open-handed, clear-sighted and finely written
book comes fresh and, I might almost say, redeemed
out of the moil and storm of controversy that surrounded the
topic of the war, in a thousand different guises in
the decades since its end. Turtle holds out his hand in the present,
seeking the lost hands of the past, in darkness, in darkness,
but also suddenly in the clear light of kindness -
in the upshot acknowledging their imperilled existence
with a brilliant flourish, a veritable banner, of wonderful stories."
Sebastian Barry
'An absolutely brilliant book.'
Patrick Geoghegan, Talking History, Newstalk
'Turtle continues the wonderful listening and yarn-spinning
he has honed in the Vanishing Ireland series, applying it to
veterans of the First World War. The stories he recreates are
poignant, whimsical and bleakly funny, bringing back into
the light the lives of people who found themselves on
the wrong side of history after the struggle for Irish independence.
This is my kind of micro-history.'
John Grenham, The Irish Times.
'A most magnificent book and beautifully done.
A superb production, superb photos.'
Gay Byrne.
'A perfect symbiosis between text and images -
both
similarity affectionate, respectful, h
umorous,
slightly
. .
ancholic but never sentimental or nostalgic.
This
is invaluable social history'.
Cara.
*****
'This is a
beautiful and remarkably simple book
that
will
melt the
hardest of
hearts. Bunbury has a light
writing
style that
lets his interviewees,
elderly folk
from
around
the country,
tell their stories without
interference.
It's
neither
patronising nor overly
romantic about the
past;
just
narrating moving
tales ...
The portraits by Fennell are
striking, warm
and
dignified, with a feeling of being
invited
into
people's lives'.
The Sunday Times
******
TWITTER
Click here to follow Turtle on Wordpress
Wistorical, Turtle's
historical blog,
is updated
daily and provides an innovative
forum for
promoting
local history
globally.
Click on Wistorical to join.
VANISHING IRELAND
In 2001, Turtle and
photographer
James Fennell
embarked on the first
of many adventures,
criss-crossing
Ireland
to interview and
photograph
people born in the first
decades
of the 20th century.
With over 300 such
interviews under their belt,
their
findings
have
been published
in a series
of
beautiful,
best-selling &
critically coffee table books.
The Vanishing Ireland series is now a
household
name across Ireland;
the Irish
Independent hailed
it
as
'an
invaluable
record
of times past'.
Three volumes were short-listed for
Best Irish Published Book of the
Year.
All four Vanishing Ireland books
are available via Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk
Turtle & James also collaborated on
‘The Irish Pub’,
an
ode to the
rapidly
changing
pub scene
in rural Ireland.
Turtle has given talks
on the project in New
York,
Paris,
London,
Chicago,
Dublin, Limerick,
Carlow,
Cork, Kilkenny and Monte
Carlo.
An exhibition at Castletown House, Co. Kildare,
runs until Oct 2016.
The series enjoyed a run of successful
shows
at:
Burtown House, Co. Kildare;
Smock Alley
Theatre, Dublin
City Assembly House, Dublin;
Cill Rialaig, Co.
Kerry;
Visual Arts
Centre, Carlow;
Hunt
Museum, Limerick
City.