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​THu 18TH June 2026

The David McWilliams Podcast

5pm, Cuala

To understand economics, you must understand human nature. This is a live recording of the podcast that aims to make economics and finance accessible, digestible and fun. David and John will be joined by a special guest who also has a hit popular economics podcast. Soumaya Keynes is columnist with The Financial Times and author of How to Win a Trade War - an optimistic guide to an anxious global economy. Expect wit, irreverence and insight.

David McWilliams & John Davis and special guest Soumaya Keynes

Tickets

Standing Up to Putin: Nadya Tolokonnikova

6.30pm, Loreto Abbey

Nadya Tolokonnikova the founding member of Pussy Riot is an artist, dissident, refugee and now, exiled member of the Platform of Russian Democratic Forces at the Council of Europe. Lots of people talk, but few suffer for their convictions. At 22 she was jailed in a Russian penal colony for two years. Her band Pussy Riot, shot to international stardom for speaking truth to power. In this truly special event, Nadya explores the role of the artist, what it means to make art in dictatorship and in exile, the nature of totalitarianism, the danger of silence, her support for Ukraine, feminism, and the power of hope. In her own words: “None of this is radicalism to me. It’s common sense. If that upsets someone, I can mail them a little napkin so they can cry into it.”

Nadya Tolokonnikova

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Anne Enright: Pay Attention!

8pm, Cuala

For thirty years Anne Enright has been paying attention, casting her lucid and distinctive gaze across the world, literature and her own life. Her precise insights in a series of essays, collated from across Enright's career, take us from Dublin to Galway, Canada to Honduras. Delving into family history, and exploring the free voices and controlled bodies of women in society and fiction, Enright also offers fresh perspectives on writers including Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Helen Garner and Angela Carter. Intelligent, compassionate and humorous, this is a defining collection from one of the most distinguished literary voices.

Anne Enright with Declan Hughes

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American culture: who is shaping the nation’s story?

8.30pm, Loreto Abbey

Herman Melville depicted the New England pioneers of the 19th century, Scott Fitzgerald captured the Golden Age, Kerouac the beat generation, Beyonce wrote the script during the Obama era. Is Joe Rogan the bard of Mar-a-Lago? How is American culture responding - via music, literature , theatre, TV or Podcasts - to the Trump era? Or did American popular culture create it in the first place?

Jeanine Cummins, Mark Blyth, Mary Cregan, with Finn McRedmond

America 250

Tickets
Anchor 1
Thurds
Anchor 5

Fri 19TH June 2026

Unorthodox

11am, St Patrick’s Church

Deborah Feldman’s first book, her memoir “Unorthodox, The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots”, was an international bestseller and the basis for the Emmy-award-winning Netflix series. It tells her harrowing story as a Hasidic Jewish woman, who miraculously escapes an arranged marriage within her closed New York community to find freedom in Germany. Today, Deborah lives in Berlin and her latest taboo-breaking book, provocatively-titled Judenfetisch (Jew Fetish) contends that Germany’s past is blinding it to criticism of Israel. Coming from the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors, this argument has put her on a collision course with official Germany’s support of Tel Aviv. This conversation will mix the personal and the political, in a world where easy compromises are no longer possible.

Deborah Feldman with David McWilliams

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Clean Energy and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

12pm, Cuala

Over a hundred years ago, Roger Casement exposed the brutality of rubber plantations in the Congo to a horrified world. Today, you probably don’t think about Congo when you pick up your phone or start your electric car - but you should. There’s a dark side to clean energy. The scramble to control the resources (cobalt, lithium, copper, tungsten) rests on corrupt bargains, mass displacements, environmental destruction, child labour, and perilous mining conditions, often in the poorest places on earth. To fuel our insatiable demand for cleaner, greener and faster technology, are we exchanging virtue-signalling and clean power at home for pollution and suffering elsewhere?

Nicolas Niarchos with Ruth Freeman

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An Irishman's Diary

12pm, Seafront

Frank McNally’s eclectic Irishman’s Diary has been celebrating the quirkier side of Irish life under his keen eye since 2006. This session will explore McNally’s range of interests and obsessions, from abandoned cats to his defence of the correct use of English. McNally is a true inheritor of the original diarist Myles na gCopaleen.

Frank McNally with Caroline Erskine

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The Good Russian

12.30pm, St Patrick’s Church

When Putin invaded Ukraine, Russian writer, Jana Bakunina, felt furious and ashamed but most of all helpless. A year later she travelled to her home city of Yekaterinburg to see how ordinary Russians view the conflict and whether the soul of her nation had truly been crushed . Some of her old friends are happy to go along with the regime, while others stay out of politics altogether. Her once liberal father channelled personal disappointment into becoming a fan of Putin. In the grand humane tradition of Russian dissident writers, Jana Bakunina grapples with a universal problem: what happens when the country you love becomes infected by nationalism?

Jana Bakunina with Patrick Freyne

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Making Europe Great Again

2pm, Cuala

Europe must find its MOJO. Bullied by Russia in the East,humiliated by America from the West, and economically threatened by China, Europe has a choice - wither or fight back. America has signalled that the relationship is over. In pursuing America First, Trump has weakened the idea of the West as a shared project. It does not want or need Europe any more, painting the Old Continent as ineffectual, cowardly, lazy, and overrun by non-Christian immigrants. Is this accurate? Or does the divorce from America provide the greatest opportunity for a twenty-first century European Renaissance? As Europe faces a crucial election year in 2027 (in France, Germany and Spain), we assess Europe’s prospects.

Katja Hoyer, Lea Ypi, Robert Shrimsley, David McWilliams with Mark Blyth

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The World After Gaza

2pm, Seafront

The world remains split over Gaza. The 20th century moral Western imagination is shaped by the Holocaust. It is the unspeakable crime, leading to on-going official support for Israel as a safe home for Jews. In the Global South, on the other hand, the unspeakable crime was colonialism, the mass slaughter and enslavement of indigenous people and the position of the Palestinians is seen as yet one more example of colonialism. For Europeans and Americans, victory over the Nazis is the ultimate moral crusade; for the South, that crusade is victory over the European settlers. These worldviews smash into each other in Gaza like no other conflict. The first world understands Israel because it created it; the colonised world feels the Gazan pain.

What does the world look like after the war in Gaza? How can the UN, the WHO, the IMF or even the EU function when everyone is required to take sides? Can the Irish, who look and live like the former colonisers but think like the colonised, square this circle? Must you acknowledge both crimes, or do you need to choose? This session is not one for easy answers.

Ramita Navai, Sally Hayden, Deborah Feldman, Avi Shlaim with Pat Leahy

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How Physics Can Save Your Life

2pm, St Patrick’s Church

Can physics change your life? It already has. Far from being abstract, physics can help us answer some very human questions, questions like: Why are some relationships unstable, while others last a lifetime? Why does inequality persist? Why do we all make so many irrational decisions? Drawing on quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity theory and more, Zahaan Bharmal reveals the hidden, surprising and sometimes beautiful ways that physics can help us make sense of an unpredictable world. By embracing the paradoxes and uncertainty at the core of physics, we can unlock a deeper understanding of ourselves and our universe.

Zahaan Bharmal with Ruth Freeman

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Charlie Mackesy: Always Remember

4pm, Cuala

Always Remember, the sequel to Charlie’s beloved and bestselling 2019 title, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, was the top selling book in Ireland and in the UK at Christmas 2025. Barely a dry eye in the house when Charlie came to Dalkey last year, this will be a beautiful event for all ages. It may look like a picture book for children at first glance but, as Charlie says, “This book is for everyone, whatever age you are, and I hope it helps you remember that you are loved, and you matter. You are brave and magnificent.”

Charlie Mackesy introduced by David McWilliams

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Obama to MAGA

4pm, Seafront

The world changes quickly. Ten years ago, America had a black president committed to civil rights, the rule of law and the international system. That has been upended. What is behind this transformation? Economics? Culture? Technology? International power politics? And is MAGA the American answer to a divided and unstable world?

Lionel Shriver, Cullen Murphy, Ece Temelkuran with Colm O’Regan

America 250

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The Importance of Being Oscar

4pm, St Patrick’s Church

In After Oscar, Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde’s only grandson, charts the extraordinary afterlife of the legendary writer, thinker, wit, and decadent, tracing the dramatic fluctuations in Wilde’s posthumous reputation over the past 125 years. Oscar Wilde died in November 1900, exiled in Paris and exhausted by scandal and prison life. The details of his life in the limelight are well known; what has regularly been ignored are the reverberations of the scandal for decades after his death: the myths and legends, the quarrels between his friends and enemies, the court cases, the story of his sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, concealing their identities and selling off the family history; the biography industry that now surrounds Wilde’s life, as well as his position as a gay icon.

Merlin Holland with Caoilinn Hughes

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Tim Berners-Lee:the most influential inventor of the modern world

6pm, Loreto Abbey

The inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a different kind of visionary. Born in the same year as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Berners-Lee famously shared his invention, the World Wide Web, for no commercial reward. Its widespread adoption changed everything, transforming humanity into the first digital species, launching a new era of creativity and collaboration while unleashing a commercial race that today imperils democracies and polarizes public debate. As the rapid development of artificial intelligence heralds a new era of innovation, Berners-Lee examines the power of technology – both to fuel our worst instincts and to profoundly shape our lives for the better. His memoir This Is for Everyone is an essential read for understanding our times and a bold manifesto for advancing humanity’s future which includes plenty of optimism in the face of the sometimes darker impacts of technology.


Tim Berners-Lee with Mark Little

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Portrait of an Artist: Colin Davidson

6pm, Cuala

Twelve Paintings is an intimate and compelling exploration of the life and work of renowned artist Colin Davidson. With his friend, Mark Carruthers, Northern Ireland's best known and most respected broadcaster, this session will delve into Davidson's creative process and the powerful human stories behind his work. Twelve key works - from early Belfast street scenes to iconic portraits of figures like Queen Elizabeth II and Seamus Heaney - serve as gateways into broader reflections on art, memory and place. A rare glimpse into the artist's evolving practice will reveal not only the technical and emotional depth behind his work but also his personal convictions - about creativity, identity and the role of the artist in bearing witness. A peak into the world behind the canvas, bridging the gap between private reflection and public expression.

Colin Davidson with Mark Carruthers

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China - Taiwan, Deep Dive

6pm, Seafront

Many in Europe talk about China and Taiwan but do we really understand the history, the animosities, and the potential instability? Who are the Taiwanese? The island, once known as Formosa, has been fought over by Portugal, Netherlands, Japan and China. How did it become the world’s largest microchip superpower? And can China and Taiwan live together and avoid Armageddon? If not, what happens to Korea, Japan and the region as a whole?

Angelica Oung and Yanmei Xie with Bill Emmott

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Being John Banville

6pm, St Patrick’s Church

In a publishing career spanning over 50 years. John Banville has won many of the most prestigious awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Booker Prize. Perhaps his most astonishing achievement has been the remarkable volume of his output. From 1971 to 2005, he published 14 novels (a novel roughly every 2 or 3 years) as well as book reviews , some plays, screenplays, and more. Since 2006, he’s published ten crime novels. A master stylist and one of the greatest imaginations in literary history, his place in world literature is secure. Caroline Erskine asks what it’s like “Being John Banville”.

John Banville with Caroline Erskine

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Mr Hoo and Other Stories

6pm, Heritage Centre

In his latest short story collection, John O’Donnell explores themes of loneliness, vengeance, sorrow, and desire. From a gullible bird-lover to a woman seeking revenge against an author, a brooding survivor of the Titanic, and a young murderer trying to cheat the gallows, these stories are about almost-winners and not-quite losers. Love and loss, redemption and remorse, yearning and heartbreak; a moving examination of the human condition.

John O’Donnell with Ian Robertson

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Democracy in an Age of Radicalism

8pm, Loreto Abbey

Democracy disappeared in the 1930s in Germany . Up to then the most enlightened country in Europe. Could that happen again, beginning in America? Faced with fake news, amplified by the Internet and social media, the polarisation of voters, real enemies in the likes of Russia and significant income inequality at home, is it surprising that people don’t really care so much about democracy? How can democracies fight back?

Robert Shrimsley, Avi Shlaim, Lionel Shriver with Rory Carroll

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Reimagining Ireland’s Economy

8pm, Cuala

Is Ireland an economic miracle or one giant Ponzi scheme inflated by American money and unbelievable self-regard on the part of our economic managers? Can a country that finds it impossible to build a metro system be taken seriously or considered rich at all? In the wake of Trump’s tariffs, de-globalisation and the fact that many of Ireland's young people are voting with their feet and emigrating, we address this crucial question: how can we reimagine the Irish economy?

David McWilliams, Mark Blyth, Jennifer Bray, Finn McRedmond with Pat Leahy

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Hungry, a Biography of My Body

8pm, Seafront

Raised in a home marked by poverty, addiction and abuse, Katriona O’Sullivan defied the odds: from becoming a teenage mother while battling her own addictions to rising to the role of university professor and acclaimed author. But behind every achievement was a more private struggle; with her body, her worth, and the pressure to be “enough”. In Katriona’s unflinching account, she examines how trauma, class and gender shape the way women see themselves, and how society teaches them to measure their value. Hungry is both a personal reckoning and a powerful reclaiming of body, voice and self; one woman’s story, and a rallying cry for every woman who has ever felt she had to shrink to survive.

Katriona O’Sullivan with Barbara Scully

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Love Forms: Claire Adam

8pm, St Patrick’s Church

Described as 'a quietly devastating masterpiece' by Marian Keyes, Claire Adam’s latest novel Love Forms explores themes familiar to an Irish audience. Trinidad, 1980: a 16 yr old leaves home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. where she gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption. She tries to carry on with her life - but through it all, she still thinks of the child she had in Venezuela, and of what might have been. Forty years later, a woman from an internet forum gets in touch to say that she might be the long-lost daughter, stirring up a complicated mix of feelings: could this be the person to give form to all the love and care a mother has left to offer?

Claire Adam with Andrea Catherwood

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Irish Writers: A Kaleidoscopic Portrait

8pm, Heritage Centre

Books Editor of The Irish Times, Martin Doyle, has interviewed many of the most talented Irish writers at different stages of their careers, giving book-lovers a privileged insight into the creative processes of many of their favourite writers, from Sally Rooney to Claire Keegan, Roddy Doyle to Colm Tóibín, and Donal Ryan to Paul Murray. In this conversation, Martin offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the Irish literary world as it has evolved over the past 35 years.

Martin Doyle with Martina Devlin

Tickets
FRIDAY
Fri
Anchor 2

SAT 20TH June 2026

Is this what Fascism looks like?

10am, Cuala

In the 1930s people looked the other way. Some called it strongman rule, authoritarianism or populism but few called it what it was: fascism. Hitler could have his Olympics, Mussolini his slice of Africa, while Stalin could orchestrate Show Trials and people , including elites, leaders, and commentators, looked away. Is that what is happening now and are we also looking away - from the streets of the United States to the Donbas borderlands and the West Bank to the jails of Istanbul? Worryingly for Europeans, all polls suggest a swing to fascist parties in the coming years. Can we continue to put our head in the sand?

Katja Hoyer, David McWilliams with Colm O’Regan

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Create Your Own Bookshop: Creative Writing Workshop (Age 9+)

10am, The Vico

If your child likes creating characters and settings and coming up with original ideas, they will love this fun interactive workshop with award-winning author Sarah Webb. During the workshop, the young writers will dream up their own bookshop and write a story, poem or comic strip about it. Will it be a bookshop run by cats, or a bookshop that also sells donuts? They will decide!

Sarah Webb

Due to limited space, parents / guardians attending with children must book an Adult (free) ticket. No more than 3 children to one adult.


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Resisting for Peace: Can Jews & Arabs live together?

10.30am, Town Hall

Some Israelis and Palestinians are working together for peace. Despite the terrorism of Hamas, Israel's brutal war on Gaza, and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, people on both sides are seeking reconciliation. This urgent film, Resisting for Peace follows courageous individuals struggling to live together in a traumatised region. Whether in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, or Beit Jala, in Israeli kibbutzim or at Israeli army checkpoints, the personal stories in this documentary illustrate the profound tragedies being suffered by both Palestinians and Israelis. The film’s directors belong to the French feminist movement Guerrières de la Paix (Warriors of Peace), which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025.

(A one hour documentary film followed by a 50 minute Q & A with the directors.)

Duration: 120 mins

Hanna Assouline and Sonia Terrab with Rick O’Shea

With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland

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From Personal to Universal: A Writing Workshop

10.30am, Loreto Lecture Theatre

Creating memoir and non-fiction, a two-hour workshop where you will: learn the key elements of successful memoir; unlock the structural secrets to great non-fiction; how to take elements from your life and turn them into stories that will have wide and lasting appeal.

Duration: 120 mins

Miriam Mulcahy

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Hugh Leonard Centenary: Guided Walk

10.30am, Heritage Centre

Amble through Hugh Leonard's Dalkey as part of his centenary year celebrations. This guided walk features places and passages from Leonard's final, unpublished memoir A Devil for Grandeur, with personal reminiscences from his daughter Danielle Keyes Byrne, She leads the walk, with readings by a local actor.
Hugh Leonard’s published work will be on display in the Dalkey Library on Castle Street.

Duration approx 75 mins

Danielle Keyes Byrne

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China’s Next Move

11am, Seafront

We are in the Chinese century. From economics to diplomacy, from technology to finance, communist China is showing the capitalists how to be capitalist. When Beijing moves, the world pays attention. We examine China’s quest to reshape the world order. What does it mean for America, Europe and you ?

Yanmei Xie, Angelica Oung, Sony Kapoor With Bill Emmott

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The Pain Of Exile: Hisham Matar

11am, St Patrick’s Church

Hisham Matar was nineteen when his father was kidnapped by Gadaffi’s forces and taken to prison in Libya. He never saw him again. In his Pulitzer winning memoir The Return, Hisham Matar explores how this traumatic experience shaped him and the way history and politics can bear down on an individual life. In his more recent novel, My Friends, Matar examines what it means to live a life in exile. An ode to friendship and to literature, the novel opens in 1984 during the Libyan embassy siege in London when two Libyan friends who are protesting against the regime get caught up in a way that will change their lives forever.

Hisham Matar with Roddy Doyle

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The Heart of Portugal

11am, Heritage Centre

Afonso Reis Cabral’s most recent book, Take Me with You – Portugal’s National Road 2 on Foot, offers an intimate and deeply human portrait of Portugal as experienced through one of its most iconic routes. In this travel memoir, Cabral undertakes a 24‑day solo journey along National Road 2 - a nearly 500‑mile stretch that cuts across the country from Chaves to Faro. Walking through mountains, plains, small towns and river valleys he documents not only the landscapes, but also the encounters, conversations and quiet moments that reveal the spirit of Portugal today.

Afonso Reis Cabral, winner of the José Saramago Prize, discusses the creation of this remarkable travel narrative and the insights he gathered while tracing the very heart of Portugal on foot.

Afonso Reis Cabral with Barbara Scully

Proudly supported by Visit Portugal

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Every Time We Say Goodbye

11am, Masonic Lodge

Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? Croatian novelist Ivana Sajko’s captivating novel takes place on a train journey from Zagreb to Berlin, through what the Germans call Mitteleuropa, the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and home to Europe’s most brilliant intellectuals from Freud to Wittgenstein, Roth to Schiele. With that patchwork of nationalities, languages and religions as her canvas, Sajko poses the question, ‘What is to be a European in the 21st century?’ Are we romantic or depressive? Do we determine events or do events determine us? Can our lives unravel and yet the world carry on? Or vice versa? Blending Franz Kafka with Stefan Zweig, with an unruly nod to Joyce, Every Time We Say Goodbye is a book for our age, told by a Balkan writer, against the background of national and personal disintegration. If you are interested in the future of Europe, this is for you.

Ivana Sajko and Katy Derbyshire

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Is Maradona in Heaven?

11am, Grapevine

Is Maradona in Heaven is an uncompromising account of the loss of an only son to cancer. Written by Dubliner Conor Horgan, it resonates with unspeakable sorrow as he and his wife Anne face the death of their incredibly brave 8-year-old, Michael. Yet for all its darkness, pain and disappointment, their story is wrapped in the deep warmth of a parents’ love and their crusade to make their son’s final months ones to remember forever. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to Michael’s Fan Club, a charity founded by Conor and Anne last year to bring the joy of sport to children battling cancer in Ireland. In conversation with Frank Dillon.

Conor Horgan with Frank Dillon

This is a free event. No ticket needed.

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The Reluctant Memoirist: Sebastian Faulks

11.30am, Loreto Abbey

Sebastian Faulks is one of the finest novelists of his generation, critically acclaimed and perhaps best loved for Birdsong (which sold over two million copies). His latest book, a not-quite-a-memoir, Fires Which Burned Brightly offers a series of detailed snapshots of his life - from a post-war rural childhood via the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the most acclaimed English novelists.

Sebastian Faulks with Andrea Catherwood

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Master of Monsters with Dave Rudden (Age 8+)

11.30am, The Vico

Every good adventure needs a monster. Join Sunday Times-bestselling author Dave Rudden as he shares essential tips on creating your own cast of catastrophic creatures - from inspiration to character to bringing them to life with stomach-churning descriptions. Perfect for families, this event is all about encouraging creativity and empowering kids to tell their own stories (even if they do turn out a little bit monstrous).

Dave Rudden

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Outsiders: Jeanine Cummins

12pm, Cuala

In the internationally bestseller American Dirt (which sold over 3.5 million copies in 37 languages), Cummins plunged us into the violent world of Mexican drug cartels, murder, intimidation, humiliation and the desperation of illegal migration. This is reality for millions of people today. Her latest novel, Speak to me of Home, is a heartfelt, multigenerational family story which asks: what does it mean to call a place home?

Jeanine Cummins with John Boyne

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Understanding Iran

12.30pm, Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel

Strategically located at the intersection of Arab, Indian, Turkish and Russian worlds, on the road from Europe to China and India, blocking the access of Russia to the Indian Ocean, and controlling the choke point that are the straits of Hormuz, who are the Iranians? In the past 100 years, they’ve been occupied, suffered a CIA-inspired coup, been ruled by monarchies, democracies and theocracies. Through it all they maintained one burning desire: to build Fortress Iran.

Since 1979, the West has tried to break Iran, with sanctions and bombs, while calling on the Iranians to break it from within. But the walls only grow taller. Surrounded by enemies, Iran has survived. Persian not Arab, Shia not Sunni, Iran has always been different. What’s next, for Iran, the region and the globe?

Ramita Navai, Sally Hayden, Robert Shrimsley, Avi Shlaim with Colm O’Regan

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Portugal: Europe’s Cultural Gem

12.30pm, Heritage Centre

From coastlines to UNESCO‑listed heritage, from world‑class gastronomy to vibrant contemporary culture, Portugal offers an exceptional diversity of experiences. This conversation invites you to explore the country’s unique blend of landscapes, traditions and regional identities, a richness that makes Portugal one of Europe’s most captivating destinations. Portugal is a land of deep cultural layers: the melancholy of fado, the craftsmanship of traditional tiles, the innovation of modern architecture, the excellence of its wines, and the warmth of a people known for their hospitality. A place where past and present coexist effortlessly, offering visitors a sense of authenticity that is increasingly rare in today’s world.

Join us for this insightful panel event as our guests delve into the many facets that make Portugal a true cultural gem.

Madalena Vidigal, Susana Cereja, Afonso Reis Cabral, with David McWilliams

Proudly supported by Visit Portugal

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Mary Costello: A Beautiful Loan

12.30pm, Masonic

There is no greater chronicler of the inner life at this moment than Mary Costello, according to The Guardian. In her books, Costello has explored the depths hidden within even the ostensibly quietest of lives. Her latest novel, A Beautiful Loan, follows 19 year old Anna. In thrall to the older, more worldly Peter, Anna sets out on a painful road to self-discovery. With the utmost attention, Costello explores the multitudes we all contain and, in a world where technology and AI seek to reduce us and neatly define us, she reminds us of our profound, complex, often contradictory psyche and what it really means to be human.

Mary Costello with Madeleine Keane

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Dalkey Colouring Adventure

12.30pm-4:30pm, Library

Drop in to Dalkey Library, join artist Jennifer Delaney, unwind and colour in Dalkey’s vibrant wildlife, its coastline, including dolphins, native birds and boats. It’s a perfect way to relax and engage with the beauty of Dalkey.

Jennifer Delaney

This is a free event. No ticket needed.

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Watching Over Her: Jean-Baptiste Andrea

12.45pm, St Patrick’s Church

Watching Over Her launched Jean-Baptiste Andrea into the literary stratosphere winning France’s most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt. The novel is set during the tumultuous decades of the first half of 20th century Italy. It tells the love story between Mimo, a poor fatherless Italian boy who grows up to become a famous sculptor, and Viola, an intelligent and ambitious aristocrat. Mimo's career takes off once he starts to accept well-paid commissions from the fascist government. Against the rise of Mussolini and fascism, the novel confronts the complicity of the church and the aristocracy and asks what is the role of the artist in society, particularly during turbulent political times?

Jean-Baptiste Andrea with Jennifer O’Connell

With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland

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Nation of Strangers: Ece Temelkuran

1pm, Seafront

Across the world the number of refugees and exiles, the dispossessed and displaced, the politically homeless and the economically excluded is growing. In the decade since she left Turkey, Ece Temelkuran has been warning that fascism is coming. As oppression spreads and temperatures rise, we learn that no institution is so concrete it can’t turn to dust, and no home is too strong to be destroyed. As we all become strangers, our home will depend on the strength we find with one another. This is for anyone who feels alienated by an ever-more monstrous world.

Ece Temelkuran with Rick O’Shea

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Chris Haughton’s Picture Books

1pm, The Vico

Join award-winning author, designer and illustrator Chris Haughton as he takes young readers on a magical journey filled with incredible stories. The stunningly beautiful picture books - A Bit Lost, Oh No, George!, and Well Done, Mummy Penguin - come to life on a big-screen.

Due to limited space, parents / guardians attending with children must book an Adult (free) ticket. No more than 3 children to one adult.

Chris Haughton

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1.30pm, Town Hall

In 1925, Virgina Woolf published Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse would come out in 1927. A hundred years on, she continues to be celebrated but, unlike Joyce ( who she didn’t rate), no one really reads her today. Perhaps she has been praised too much and placed so high on a pedestal that the non-academic reader feels underqualified to read her for fun. If you've always wanted to read Woolf but have been put off by stuffy academia, our panel will save you. Enjoyable, lively and moving, her novels ring true even a hundred years on. No one should be afraid of Virginia Woolf!

Merve Emre, Mary Cregan with Jan Carson

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The Man Who Changed the World: Jimmy Wales

2pm, Loreto Abbey

Wikipedia is 25 years old. Its founder, Jimmy Wales, created something truly spectacular: a voluntary encyclopaedia of the world, crowd-funded and crowd-sourced, showcasing the best of what the Internet could have been. A charitable venture, Wikipedia has been the go-to for free information for hundreds of millions of us every day. Wikipedia is completely independent, not run for profit, and based on that most ephemeral characteristic: trust. It changed the world. Come listen to the man who made it all happen.

Jimmy Wales with Luke O’Neill

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In Search of Beethoven with John Suchet

2pm, Heritage Centre

John Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven’s music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times. It was with him as a music-loving and adventurous teenager, as a journalist entering Beirut in the grip of civil war, and as he travelled to Bonn and Vienna to visit the buildings in which Suchet lived and worked. In this novel and compelling book, we see Beethoven brought vividly – and sometimes painfully – to life, with comprehensive coverage of new and ground-breaking research into the ongoing mysteries surrounding Beethoven's health and ancestry, including the as yet unexplained cause of his deafness. In Search of Beethoven ( a Financial Times book of the year) traces Beethoven’s footsteps from his early years in Bonn to his dying days in Vienna, taking us on a journey both literal and symbolic, to demonstrate the life-changing power of great music.
John Suchet

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The Left and the Lucky

2pm, Cuala

According to Roddy Doyle, Willy Vlautin is one of America’s greatest writers and we are delighted to welcome him back to Dalkey to chat about his latest novel. Equal parts heart wrenching and uplifting, The Left and the Lucky is a portrait of a friendship, the ways hurt shatters people and the compassionate acts that can hold some of those pieces together. Lives on the margins are delicately and compassionately observed by this master storyteller.

Willy Vlautin with Roddy Doyle

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Worldsmiths - a fantasy writing workshop with Dave Rudden (Age 16+)

2pm, Loreto Lecture Theatre

From fraught romantasies to war on a universal scale, fantasy as a genre has never been more popular. It's also a daunting genre to write. How do you balance world-building, character development, and a pacy, propulsive plot? Join Sunday Times-bestselling fantasy author Dave Rudden as he provides you with a blueprint to your world-smithing - from crafting unique cultures to complex magic systems to your own unique narrative voice. Packed with practical advice and industry experience, this workshop is perfect for the new and ambitious writer or an experienced scribe seeking to take their manuscript one step further. Dave Rudden's adult debut Sister Wake was called 'the rare epic fantasy that delivers on all levels' by Andrea Stewart, author of the Bone Shard Daughter. He has taught hundreds of workshops on fantasy, craft, and how to make your work stand out in a crowded genre. Duration: 90 mins.

Dave Rudden

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The Oil Shock: 1973 All Over Again?

2.30pm, Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel

Is the world, for the fourth time in fifty years, about to experience a global recession because of a war in the Middle East? With all the talk of tech and AI, we should remember that the economy is still dirty, heavy and smelly and black oil is the foundational price. When it rises, the price of everything rises. Even if peace holds, we now understand how fragile the global supply chain is. At its heart, the modern economy is about transport and transport runs on oil. How will the oil shock affect your income, pension, job prospects, the rate of interest and our economic security? What can be done or are we still hopelessly addicted to petrol and therefore constantly at risk of economic, political and financial shocks?

Mark Blyth, David McWilliams, Sony Kapoor and Soumaya Keynes with David Murphy

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Troubled Relations: Ireland and Britain

2.30pm, St Patrick’s Church

Fintan O’Toole, an Irishman with many English relations, has written a book about England. Philip Stephens, an Englishman with many Irish relations, has written a book about Ireland. Ten years after Brexit, where is the common ground? Will we ever really understand each other? And, in a world defined by Trump, Putin and Xie, does our narcissism of small differences really matter?

Philip Stephens and Fintan O’Toole with Andrea Catherwood

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Doireann Ní Ghríofa: Said The Dead

2.30pm, Masonic

From the prizewinning author of A Ghost in the Throat, comes an unforgettable book, both history and ghost story. A woman flinches as she walks past a derelict Cork asylum where a “For Sale” sign is the first of many signs she follows, drawing her into an irresistible river of forgotten voices. Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds - past and present, imagined and real - to make something lasting and new: an experience full of danger, love and truth.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa with Jennifer O’Connell

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Create a Comics Character with Sarah Bowie

2.30pm, The Vico

Join bestselling writer and illustrator Sarah Bowie for a fast‑paced cartooning workshop. Sarah is the creator of the smash‑hit Nina Peanut series, superstar‑in‑the‑making, frozen‑pizza chef, creative genius, and proud owner of the world’s stinkiest cat. Grab your pencils and get ready for quick‑fire drawing challenges, expert tips and insight into how graphic novels are made - all to help you design your very own comics character. An inspiring and fun session that proves anyone can draw!

Due to limited space, parents / guardians attending with children must book an Adult (free) ticket. No more than 3 children to one adult.

Sarah Bowie

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Growing Up Communist

3pm, Seafront

Forty years ago, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded and with it the credibility of the Communist system. Gorbachev regarded it as the beginning of the end. What was it like to live in the Soviet system or one of its satellites? How did it make you think? And what is its legacy? Four extraordinary writers - Albanian, East German, Russian and Yugoslavian- explain what it was like to grow up Communist and, looking at the mess of 2026, is there anything we can learn from Marx or Lenin?

Lea Ypi, Katja Hoyer, Jana Bakunina, Ivana Sajko with Pat Leahy

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Women in the Picture

3.30pm, Town Hall

A perfect pin-up, a damsel in distress, a saintly mother, a femme fatale. A limited set of archetypes, found everywhere in pictures from art history's classics to advertising, have stifled women’s identity, while women artists have been overlooked and held back from shaping more empowering roles. Art historian Catherine McCormack asks us to look again at what these images have told us to value, opening up our most loved images - from those of Titian and Botticelli to Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites. She also shows us how women artists offer us new ways of seeing the art of the past and the familiar images of today so that we might free women from these restrictive roles and embrace the breadth of women's vision.

Catherine McCormack with Caoilinn Hughes

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Few and Far Between: Jan Carson

3.30pm, Heritage Centre

In 1958, Terence O’Neill suggested draining Lough Neagh to form a seventh county of Northern Ireland. Jan Carson imagines an alternative version of Northern Ireland’s recent past where this mad plan to drain Lough Neagh goes ahead, exposing an archipelago of tiny islands in the middle of the lake (which really exist) that become home to a community seeking refuge from the Troubles.

Jan Carson with Barry Devlin

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Far Right France and the Future of Europe

4pm, Loreto Abbey

We examine the rise of the French populist far right, now leading in the polls- and what it means for European politics. With France’s 2027 presidential election looming, joining our three French panelists, is the FT senior editor and former Paris bureau chief, Victor Mallet.

Victor Mallet, Nicolas Marcoux, Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Hanna Assouline with David McWilliams

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The History of Information

4pm, Cuala

From the first languages and cave paintings to AI , the story of information is the story of humanity. The striving to share information, and – at the same time – the striving to undermine it, explains so much of today's world and connects so many seemingly unconnected things: the rise of religions, states, science, democracy, the west, militarism, racism, fascism, consumerism, big tech, polarisation, and AI. Stunning graphics and beautiful illustrations tell this history visually with timelines and artwork effortlessly distilling complex concepts. Accessible, compelling and utterly captivating.

Chris Haughton

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Illuminating Translations, a workshop with Katy Derbyshire

4pm, Loreto Lecture Theatre

Let’s talk about translations and what we expect from them. Over about an hour, Katy will give participants a selection of short anonymised paragraphs from either translated or original English contemporary novels and ask you to look at the language and guess whether it is translated or not. Explore how stretchy language is and whether it's acceptable for a book to "feel translated". For all curious readers - whether you have a favourite translator, or have never consciously read a translation. Duration: 60 mins.

Katy Derbyshire

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Walking to the Foot of the Sky

4pm, Masonic Lodge

When she first set foot on the Beara Breifne Way, Miriam Mulcahy expected a long-distance hike that would take her across some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland. What she found instead was a living tapestry past and present: ancient landscapes where myth and memory linger; pilgrim routes and rebel roads; quiet villages, wild coastlines, hidden valleys, and the ghostly thread that ties them all together.

Following in the footsteps of Domhnall Cam O’Sullivan Beare’s fateful march in 1603, she begins her journey uncertain – of the path, of herself, of what she hopes to find. But as the miles unfurl, something shifts, and she begins to carve a line of connection in time.

This is an extraordinary story of landscape and legacy, of attention and endurance, of losing sight of yourself and finding something far better: renewal. Lyrical, reflective and quietly radical, it captures what happens when you give yourself over fully to a journey – and how, in doing so, you return changed.

Miriam Mulcahy with Barbara Scully

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Chris Judge: Evil Duck and The Nest of Destiny

4pm, The Vico

Evil Duck and the Nest of Destiny is the second bright, bold, beaking brilliant book in the full-colour graphic novel series from Chris Judge. Come and see Chris demonstrate how he draws the lead characters including Evil Duck from his latest creation, a book that is becoming a favourite of children and parents - an instant classic. Perfect for fans of Bunny vs Monkey, Dog Man and The Incredibles!

Due to limited space, parents / guardians attending with children must book an Adult (free) ticket. No more than 3 children to one adult.

Chris Judge

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Britain 10 years after Brexit

4.30pm, Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel

Ten years ago Britain shook the world - and itself - by leaving the European Union. Six Prime Ministers later, Nigel Farage, the man that the Referendum was supposed to destroy, looks set to be the next resident of Number 10. Is this inevitable? What’s next for the UK?

Sebastian Faulks, Robert Shrimsley, Andrea Catherwood and Lea Ypi with Colm O’Regan

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Literary Celebrity in the Culture War Era

4.30pm, St Patrick’s Church

Rob Doyle’s latest novel, Cameo, tells the life story of fictitious Irish author Ren Duka, a literary satire and a self-portrait across multiple dimensions. ‘There simply isn’t another novelist writing with such personality, ingenuity and purpose. ‘If he didn’t exist, someone would have to invent him’ - so says John Boyne. One of Ireland’s most outlandishly talented emerging writers and one of Ireland' s most prolific and respected literary powerhouses discuss the novel, inspiration, creativity and the blurred lines between fact and fiction, the artist and the subject.

Rob Doyle with John Boyne

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Going Nuclear

4.30pm, Seafront

Forty years ago, a catastrophic explosion in Chernobyl turned the world against nuclear power. Today, nuclear power is seen by many as the most obvious alternative to fossil fuels. If we are serious about global warming, must we be serious about nuclear? A small scale reactor in Ireland allied to renewables looks like the future. Are we ready to embrace it?

Angelica Oung, Paul Behrens, Nicolas Niarchos, Mark Blyth with Rory Carroll

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Tishani Doshi: Egrets, While War

5.30pm, Town Hall

Welsh-Indian poet, novelist and dancer, Tishani Doshi, returns to Dalkey. The poems in her fifth collection, Egrets, While War, navigate the deep entanglements between environmental loss, ancestral memory and the devastation of war. Tishani will read and perform a dance version of some of the poems in the collection. Back in 2018, Tishani enchanted the Dalkey audience in a sold out show. Don’t miss this spellbinding performance!

Tishani Doshi with Gary Jermyn

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Wendy Erskine: The Benefactors

5.30pm, Heritage Centre

From the prize-winning author of Dance Move and Sweet Home, comes an astounding novel about intimate histories, class and money – and what being a parent means. Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland - complex, nuanced, enigmatic. It is also very funny.

Wendy Erskine with Roisin Kiberd

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The Lies Between Us: Jennifer Bray

5.30pm, Masonic

Dark secrets are a family affair in this first novel from Jennifer Bray, political editor at The Sunday Times. Old arguments and jealousies come to a head when three adult sisters find someone has been violently murdered on a beach near their idyllic holiday home. Feelings of shame, envy, vanity and disgrace pervade as the daughters are haunted by family secrets.

Jennifer Bray with Martina Devlin

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What would the Founding Fathers think?

6pm, Loreto Abbey

What would the Founding Fathers, Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson, make of Trump’s America? America was founded 250 years ago, based on democracy, freedom, non-intervention abroad, and a post-colonial drive to create the ideal nation. What happened? Was it ever that pure? And where next for the country and its manifest destiny?

Lionel Shriver, Cullen Murphy, Fintan O’Toole, Peter Frankopan with Mark Blyth

America 250

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Adapt or Die; Your Future in an AI World

6pm, Cuala

Robots won’t just take your job — they’ll take your boss’s job too. Are you ready to adapt, or be deleted? Artificial intelligence could be the greatest disruption the human race has experienced. Learn how to arm yourself for an AI future.Has Big Tech betrayed us, returning us to a form of feudalism or will drudge work disappear leaving us free to enjoy our lives more?

Jimmy Wales, Sony Kapoor, and Des Traynor with Jess Kelly

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Sparks of Everyday Magic

6pm, Loreto Lecture Theatre

Prepare to be enchanted! Come on a magical adventure, a perilous trip to another world with four of the most imaginative writers. Naomi Ishiguro’s latest novel, set within a mythical archipelago brimming with dragons and Sun Spirits, high-tech hackers and bubble tea, is a dazzling fantasy inspired by anime and Japanese folklore. Sunday Times bestselling author, Dave Rudden’s new book Sister Wake has been called 'the rare epic fantasy that delivers on all levels' while Brian Franklin’s speculative fiction draws inspiration from the history and mythologies of Barbados and the wider Caribbean. With Jan Carson, this panel will seek to explain why we need fantasy more than ever.

Naomi Ishiguro, Dave Rudden and Brian Franklin with Jan Carson

With support from the Embassy of Barbados in Ireland and the Central Bank of Barbados

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Indignity, A Life Reimagined

6.30pm, St Patrick's Church

From the acclaimed Albanian author of Free comes an imaginative investigation into historical injustice, dignity and truth -- told through the story of a family from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of Communism in the Balkans. Lea Ypi, Professor of Politics and Philosophy at LSE, tells a tale of shifting borders, shifting loyalties, betrayals and survival.

Lea Ypi with Ian Roberston

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Weimar, Life on the Edge of Catastrophe

6.30pm, Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel

The city of Weimar - home to many of the giants of European culture- gave its name to Germany’s ill-fated republic; it was also where the Nazis gained an early foothold. Historian Katja Hoyer charts that journey of cultural experimentation and political upheaval through the stories of those who witnessed it. Could we be living through Weimar again?

Katja Hoyer with David McWilliams

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This is Also A Love Story with Sally Hayden

7pm, Seafront

Sally Hayden’s first book The Fourth Time We Drowned was an international bestseller revealing a new foreign correspondent from a new generation with a new perspective. Her latest book traces love stories in tortured regions - from Ukraine to Nigeria, Syria to Uganda and Iraq. Hayden invites the reader to consider what it means to be human today.

Sally Hayden with Gary Jermyn

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A Better Life: Lionel Shriver

7.30pm, Town Hall

We Need To Talk About Kevin author tackles the tensions of family, intergenerational homes and prejudice through the story of Gloria, a Brooklyn mother who hosts a migrant boarder. Always provocative, never boring, Shriver has the courage and the intellect to confront controversial issues, such as immigration. It’s a delicate issue that can arouse conflicting feelings. Novels tend to address the immigrant’s story but what about the other side, the local people? Shriver addresses the issue from both sides, with eyes wide open.

Lionel Shriver with Jennifer O’Connell

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The New Rome: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

8pm, Loreto Abbey

What went wrong in imperial Rome and can America avoid the same trajectory?

Cullen Murphy, contributing editor of The Atlantic, compares modern day America to the rise and fall of Ancient Rome, offering a series of warnings, nuanced lessons and thought-provoking strategies designed to avoid the Roman Empire’s fate.

Cullen Murphy with Fintan O’Toole

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The Willy Vlautin Sessions

8.30pm, St Patrick’s Church

Join Willy Vlautin for a session on Saturday night. Willy will be playing songs from Richmond Fontaine and The Delines plus instrumentals featured on the soundtrack from ‘Don’t Skip Out on Me’. The songs will be interspersed throughout with banter between Willy and Patrick Freyne. There’ll be a Q&A discussing his books, music and America. Accompanied on pedal steel by David Murphy (who previously toured with Richmond Fontaine).

Willy Vlautin and David Murphy with Patrick Freyne

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The Boy, the Bucket and the Persistent Tide

8.30pm, Heritage Centre

The Netherlands is ‘a nation that has been dredged up from the water and which attempts, to this day, to hold back the persistent tide’. After moving to the Netherlands in his early twenties, Charlie Jermyn found himself adopting a similar approach in his writing as he attempted to understand the country. Submerging himself in the culture through its art history, eccentricities and ordinariness, he built a home from the reclaimed sand. As the tides of time draw ever closer, threatening to sweep away the present, rather than waiting for it to wash in, Charlie ventures off the beaten track and observes the world with a boundless enthusiasm for the all-too-often overlooked, reminding us to take note of the mad and brilliant world around us before the tide comes in again. With music from special guest, John Lappin.

Charlie Jermyn with John Lappin

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Gallivanting with Words: How the Irish speak English

9pm, Town Hall

A playful romp through Irish words, phrases, curses and quirks. An irresistible love letter to the language that makes us who we are. An event for all to celebrate the way English is spoken here in Ireland whether you're a culchie, a Jackeen, a blow-in or a local as long as you're fairly sound and not a pure dose.

Join the wonderful Sharon Mannion as she "puts talk on" Colm O'Regan author of the best-selling critically acclaimed Gallivanting with Words as they both unpack the Hiberno-English way of blathering.

And this is a BYOW event - Bring Your Own Word. Scribble your favourite word on the back of a fag-box, bring it along we'll pick out a few and get to the bottom of what they mean!

Colm O’Regan with Sharon Mannion

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Sun 21ST June 2026

History of the Dublin Pub

11.30am, Finnegan’s

From The Lord Edward to The Brazen Head, historian Donal Fallon takes a trip from seventeenth-century taverns to today’s vibrant locals, along the way discovering Jonathan Swift’s favourite drinking dens and exploring the origins of some of Dublin’s most unusually named pubs, like The Bird Flanagan in Rialto.

Donal Fallon with Naoise Nunn

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AI is Theft

12pm, Loreto

AI is nothing more than creative robbery, destroying copyright, piggybacking on talent and sending the money to a bunch of tech bros who couldn’t write a nursery rhyme let alone a novel. If you gave most of these guys a book, they’d colour it in! For creativity to be encouraged, it has to be protected and celebrated, not plagiarised or besmirched.Some algorithm scraping the internet, copying the greats is not how human civilisation progresses!

Or is it? Is there another story? By making ideas available to the greatest number of people for free, is AI set to be the greatest liberator of knowledge since the printing press? Humanity’s secret for success is our collective intelligence. Might AI accelerate this process bringing knowledge to more and more people, and in the process add to the great journey of learning that defines humanity? Join our panel to explore this existential question of the 21st century.

Des Traynor, Anne Enright, Merve Emre, Chris Haughton with Ruth Freeman

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Roger Casement: Local Hero, Rebel and Traitor

12pm, Cuala

In August 1916, the British government executed Roger Casement. The hangman described him as the most courageous man he ever had the displeasure to execute. From Congo to Peru, Casement highlighted the plight of the downtrodden. Rory Carroll picks up his story on the eve of the Easter Rising. In Berlin, Casement is pursued by British intelligence. What went wrong? Who betrayed who? What was going on in the heads of the 1916 revolutionaries? And did Casement stand a chance? Master storyteller Rory Carroll has combed the archives and with meticulous historical journalistic flair reveals a gripping history and a story that still echoes through Anglo-Irish relations.

Rory Carroll with David McWilliams

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Everybody has a Story

12pm, Heritage Centre

Following the success of Leonard and Hungry Paul and the televised adaptation for the BBC, we are delighted to welcome Rónán Hession to talk about writing and adaptation as well as his most recent novel Ghost Mountain, a folk tale featuring a mountain that appeared yesterday, changing the lives of the locals.

Rónán Hession with Rick O’Shea

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The Library of Traumatic Memory

2pm, Loreto Abbey

In his first literary science fiction novel, Neil Jordan imagines a librarian who archives the world’s most painful memories. It is 2084, a world where memories can be edited, dreams harvested and the dead made to speak. In The Library of Traumatic Mistakes, Neil Jordan considers what it means to remember - and what it costs to forget.

Neil Jordan with Rick O’Shea

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The Flower Bearers: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

2pm, Cuala

The death of her closest friend and the attempted murder of her husband Salman Rushdie loom large in The Flower Bearers, a moving memoir by the poet, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. These traumatic events were “an uncanny Janus coin that [spun] around on the silent, bloodstained earth of my mind”. But it’s not all dark; as well as the grief, there is joy, and time for laughter and dancing as befits a life that is steeped in art, poetry and deep friendships.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths with Madeleine Keane

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Emilio Pucci: Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon

2pm, Town Hall

Best known for his swirling colours and easy flowing fabrics, before he was dressing Sophia Loren, Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, Emilio Pucci played a critical role in the war against the Nazis, risking his life to smuggle documents to the Allies. The drama of war and postwar Italy through the life of one of its most celebrated icons is told by his niece Idanna Pucci and her husband Terence Ward. From Olympic skier to torpedo pilot to fashion designer, Pucci’s encounters with spies, double agents, Nazi torturers, and Mussolini’s daughter make for the most dramatic life story.

Terence Ward and Idanna Pucci with Naoise Nunn

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An Optimist’s Guide to the Future

4pm, Cuala

After four packed days of literature, ideas, politics, history, science, and economics, what have we got to be happy about? Join some of the 2026 festival speakers to review the festival highlights and why, in an age of darkness and depression there are reasons to be cheerful .

Sony Kapoor, Jana Bakunina, Willy Vlautin and Angelica Oung with David McWilliams

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Experts in a Dying Field: Patrick Freyne

4pm, Town Hall

Patrick Freyne, one of Ireland’s best loved satirical columnists, returns to Dalkey. From whimsical TV reviews to keen observations on political foibles or simply documenting the absurdities of daily life, Patrick always delights . His first novel centres around surviving members of The Heathens, ‘the 1,000th best band of all time’, who reunite in Dublin to understand the tragedy that changed their lives and come to find solace in the magical power of music.

Patrick Freyne with Jennifer O’Connell

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Salman Rushdie: A Life in Writing

5.30pm, Loreto Abbey

Salman Rushdie, one of the most celebrated writers of our time, returns to Dalkey Book Festival with his latest collection The Eleventh Hour. (In 2014 he called Dalkey ‘the best little festival in the world’. Not so little now!) Translated into over forty languages, his sixteen works of fiction include Midnight's Children - for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers on the 25th anniversary of the prize and Best of the Booker on the 40th anniversary. 'Rushdie has not just enlarged literature's capacities, he has expanded the world's imaginative possibilities' - The Times.

Salman Rushdie with Merve Emre

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David O'Doherty: Highway to the David Zone

7.30pm, Cuala

A new opus from the hairy Enya, the Ryanair Bublé, the nine volt battery powered Beethoven. Talking, songs, talking during songs, talking while walking around - it’s got the lot.

Star of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (Channel 4), Live At The Apollo (BBC) and host of the ‘What Did You Do Yesterday?’ podcast.

***** ‘An unexpected, cathartic set that leaves the audience in tears of laughter’ – The Irish Times.

David O’Doherty

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