Ways of Being Irish in London

The Irish in London have a long and complicated history, taking in colonisation, revolution, assimilation and transformation. “Ways of Being Irish in London” is a course which analyses Ireland's often remarkable contribution to the artistic and cultural world of contemporary London. It brings to life the diversity and strangeness of the Irish migrant experience, and how this has been expressed through film, music, literature and theatre. The course draws on readings, both close and wide, from poetry, novel writing, BBC archival broadcasts, oral testimony, popular music and much more, introducing you to a cavalcade of writers, singers and provocateurs, who often shocked Britain but, to their own surprise, also made it their home.

The question around what it means to be first-, second- or even third-generation Irish in London is at the core of this course. We will explore representations of Irishness on the BBC, using archive footage from rarely seen documentaries acquired from their archive. We will consider the labour undertaken by Irish people in building London's infrastructure – and especially the stories of the (mainly) men who did this work, through readings of key texts such as I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O'Grady. We will explore the generation of Irish who moved to London in the 1960s and 1970s amid huge tensions in Northern Ireland and examine how figures such as Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols, Kate Bush and Shane MacGowan of the Pogues deployed their Irish heritage to sometimes shock and scandalise British culture. We will also consider how Dusty Springfield and Boy George, also born in London to Irish parents, offered a Queer reading of contemporary Britain through their music; how filmmakers such as Martin McDonagh present a form of Irishness which is accepted in Britain – but rejected in Ireland. The myriad twists of being Irish in London will provide you with a fresh lens from which to consider Ireland and Britain, and the often stormy relationship between these two places.

Archive film will be used throughout this course, both as a demonstration but also as a teaching methodology. You will be encouraged to develop responses to select pieces of footage in order to write (or even film using mobile phones) your own stories of encountering London, otherness in the city and what the concepts of "London" and "Ireland" mean to you. Readings across the course will include fiction, non-fiction, poetry and theatre monologues. You will also be encouraged to "read" the city through analysis of film, and through your own experiences. Some of the writers covered on the course will be Colm Tóibín, Martina Evans, Brian Friel and Emma Dabiri, while we will also make plentiful use of the music press from the 1970s and 1980s – particularly New Musical Express and Melody Maker – along with vintage material from Punch magazine, and many others.