Irish Studies Lecture: David Wilson, ‘Parallels & patterns: D’Arcy McGee, Cruise O’Brien & Burke’

Prof David Wilson (University of Toronto), ‘Parallels and patterns: Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Conor Cruise O’Brien and Edmund Burke’ (20/5/25)

This presentation explores the parallels between the careers of Conor Cruise O’Brien and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the one-time Irish revolutionary who became a Liberal Conservative Father of Canadian Confederation. Both men were politically-engaged public intellectuals who abandoned their earlier radicalism to become uncompromising opponents of Irish revolutionary republicanism, and both were deeply influenced by the writings of Edmund Burke – so much so, that McGee’s interpretation of Burke’s life and thought anticipates the central arguments that O’Brien adumbrated almost a century and a half later, in The Great Melody.

David A. Wilson is a Professor in the Celtic Studies Programme and History Department at the University of Toronto. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a recipient of the University of Toronto’s Outstanding Teaching Award, he has published and edited twelve books, including a prize-winning two-volume biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. His latest book is Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police (2022).
https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/IrishSt...