Thomas Kilroy draws on rich family history for RTÉ drama

A Family of Memories by acclaimed Irish playwright and novelist, Thomas Kilroy is the Drama on One on RTÉ Radio 1 Sunday, March  1. It will be broadcast at 8pm.

For the programme Thomas Kilroy, who lives in Kilmaine on the Galway-Mayo border, will read from his memoir in a radio version directed by the former Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre Patrick Mason (who won a Tony Award for Dancing at Lughnasa in 1992).

The radio piece revisits key episodes in the Kilroy family history, focusing on the War of Independence, the Civil War and the foundation of the Irish Free State. It follows the journey of the author’s father (also Thomas Kilroy), from IRA membership in the War of Independence, to a ‘High Noon moment’ as a newly recruited policeman of the Free State.

The early stages of the story are based on Caltra in East Galway and include reports from The Connacht Tribune. Thomas’s father was recruited to the IRA unit formed in Caltra in 1917.

He was arrested in 1920 and his involvement in a prison riot in Galway Jail was reported in The Tribune as follows: “Kilroy, who is suffering a life sentence on a charge arising out of the Caltra ambush got two severe baton blows on the head, and is alleged to have been kicked in the stomach.  He was almost unconscious when taken to the hospital but after his wounds had been attended to  he rose up in the bed and declared, ‘We got beaten to save the life of Diarmuid Crowley, but we would have suffered death had it been necessary to release him’.”

Kilroy’s memoir also re-creates a visit by Eamonn De Valera to Callan in Kilkenny as part of a General Election campaign in 1948.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.