Turtle Bunbury

“I am as fascinated with by what was going on in the Neolithic or Megalithic age as I am in much more recent events in the 20th century. An enormous amount of it is connected and we are rebuilding our understanding of the past and that’s going to cover everything from the ancient Bronze age time right through to the 18th or 19th century. ”

Today my guest is author and historian Turtle Bunbury. Turtle has published a number of books such as the Vanishing Ireland series, Easter Dawn – The 1916 Rising, and The Glorious Madness. Described by the BBC History Magazine as “a skilled storyteller”, Turtle has also produced a wonderful array of podcast series that focus on Irish history and provide the listener with wonderful interviews with locals. I was really looking forward to chatting with Turtle, especially about local history here in Ireland, so I hope you are sitting comfortably and happy to stay with us.

I began our chat with me talking about his excellent podcast series and why they had a special place in my own life (00:15), about how he got so interested in history (03:40) and why Turtle doesn’t draw the line when it comes to interest in the timeline of history in Ireland (05:20). We then talked about the possibility of unknown history in Ireland during the Bronze age collapse (08:05), whether the preservation of artefacts and information has been influenced by our location and history (10:50), and the possibility of finding another large site such as Newgrange (12:22). We then moved on to technology and discussed whether Turtle is using technology when conducting research (14:00), living in a possible golden age of researching and recording history (15:40), and how academia and self knowledge work in the modern era (17:50). We went on to discuss the work of TV and film productions when portraying historical images and facts (20:35), how period of times are recorded and portrayed by historians (26:25), and the rise in popularity of rural history (24:25). Towards the end of our chat, we talked about the podcasts that Turtle produced (29:03), and about how important it is to ensure History is still in main syllabus in education, before finishing up with what Turtle is reading, listening to and watching at the moment (30:20).

Show Notes

• Turtle Bunbury’s website
• Turtle’s many podcast series
• Interview with John O’Neill
• Dan Carlin podcast
• Townlands website
• Turtle on Twitter
• For more, hear my conversations with Prof. Jennie Batchelor, Clare Mulley and Tristian Hughes

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