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The highly successful Lady Gregory Autumn Gatherings will continue in Coole Park, Gort, from Friday September 24 to Sunday September 26. Recognising the remarkable influence of Lady Augusta Gregory on the development of Irish theatre and literature, this 16th gathering highlights her unique inspiration for the early foundations of the Abbey Theatre.

A range of events for all ages will take place in Coole next month as the park celebrates Tree Week as part of its spring cultural programme.

A young Kilkenny man is enjoying a high point of his acting career as he takes to the stage with the Abbey Theatre in a play penned by Kilkennyman Thomas Kilroy.

Coole Park will play host to a series of walks for families in the coming weeks.

In Roy Foster’s impressive biography of WB Yeats* he tells an interesting anecdote concerning the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the Cork coast on May 7 1915. The Galway writer Violet Martin (the second half of the caustic but amusing Sommerville and Ross duo), was walking by the sea near Castletownshend, Co Cork, when she saw the Lusitania pass in ‘beautiful weather’. Half and hour later, as the ship steamed passed the Old Head of Kinsale on her way to Liverpool, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat. Nearly 2,000 people perished.

TOMORROW, SATURDAY, and Sunday, the fabled Coole Park plays host to the 14th annual Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering which, as ever, features a top-notch array of speakers and performers coming together to celebrate Lady Gregory and her world.

Athenry, one of Ireland’s hidden jewels, is medieval heritage town surrounded by five towers of the town’s ancient walls and full of picturesque ruins. One place worth having a look at is Athenry Arts and Heritage Centre which has plenty of hands-on activities to illustrate life in the old days. Children can dress up in period costume, take out a long bow and arrows, and act out a scene from medieval battle. A selection of displays and puppets help to explain the history and significance of the walled town and the buildings that will survive. The restored Norman castle, the only one of its kind in Ireland, should be your next stop. Nearby is also a beautifully preserved Dominican priory dating from 1241, and the original market cross.

You might think that those at the core of the Irish literary renaissance at the beginning of the 20th century, were one big happy family beavering away in their rooms at Lady Gregory’s home at Coole, Co Galway. In those early days it was a house full of voices and sounds. Sometimes you heard WB Yeats humming the rhythm of a poem he was cobbling together; or the click-clacking of Lady Gregory’s typewriter as she worked on another play for the Abbey. There was the sound of the Gregory grandchildren playing in the garden; the booming voice of George Bernard Shaw, as he complains that he is only allowed to have either butter or jam on his bread, but not both to comply with war rations (He cheated by the way. He put butter on one side of his bread, and when he thought no one was looking, piled jam on the other!); or the voices of the artist Jack Yeats and JM Synge returning from a day messing about on a boat calling out to a shy Sean O’Casey to come out of the library for God’s sake and enjoy the summer afternoon.

Following the success of the publication Me and Nu - Childhood at Coole published in 1970,* it is sometimes forgotten that Lady Augusta Gregory had three grandchildren, and not two as is often assumed. Written by Lady Gregory’s granddaughter Anne, Me and Nu is a charming account of life at Coole, as the children watched with amusement (and disillusionment at their human foibles), many of the great figures of the Irish literary movement of the 20th century as they came and went.

Ireland has every possibility of getting back the 39 controversial paintings, willed to the Irish people by art collector Sir Hugh Lane at the beginning of the 20th century, but which remain in London because the codicil to his will was not witnessed. “Hugh Lane’s intentions were absolutely clear”, the dynamic director of the Hugh Lane (formerly Dublin City) Gallery, Ms Barbara Dawson said in Coole last weekend, “there is no reason on earth why the paintings are not on Irish soil permanently.”