Some returned emigrants are present to enjoy a taste of what this year's McGlinchey Summer School will have on offer. Bosco Keown, an engineer who spent 25 years working in Hong Kong and five years in Pakistan, is home and looking forward to attending the three-day event in Clonmany, Co Donegal. John Harkin, a vet whose great grandfather left Donegal in 1855, is here too on a visit from Bendigo in Australia.
This year, the focus of the school will be on emigration, in particular from the Inishowen peninsula. Ultan Cowley, historian and writer, will talk to the McGlinchey students on Sunday, July 1st, about the Irish navy in the UK. His book on the subject is being published by Wolfhound, and due out in September. Cowley, whose father and mother were the late actors, John Cowley and Anne D'Alton, who played Tom Riordan and Minnie Brennan respectively in The Riordans, was warned "to do anything but don't be an actor". He took their advice, he says. His wife, Patricia Howard, a potter, is also present at the Abbey Theatre for the launch. Old school friends from St Columb's College in Derry, Seamus Heaney, who launches the programme and Desmond Kavanagh, this year's chairman of the McGlinchey school, are able to reminisce. Declaring the summer school duely launched, beginning on Friday, What is articulated strengthens itself, what is not articulated tends towards non-being".
Discuss, as they might say in the Leaving Cert.