Dirty Linen Martin Doyle in conversation with Joe Duffy
Join editor and writer Martin Doyle as he discusses his new book with broadcaster Joe Duffy. Written with a literary sensibility, Dirty Linen (Merrion Press) is a personal, intimate and revelatory history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, the author’s own, part of both the Linen Triangle – heartland of the North’s defining industry – and the Murder Triangle – the Badlands devastated by paramilitary violence.
Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times, which he joined in 2007. He started his career in London in 1990 with The Irish World, joined The Irish Post in 1992 and became Editor before moving in 2001 to The Times. He edited A History of The Irish Post, which was published in 2000 to mark the newspaper’s thirtieth anniversary. A native of Banbridge, Co. Down, he is a graduate of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he studied French and German. He contributed an essay to The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working- Class Voices (Unbound, 2021) and to the Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace (forthcoming).
Joe Duffy is the presenter of, Liveline on RTÉ Radio 1. He also presented Liveline Callback on RTÉ One Television. He is the current presenter of the RTÉ One Television programme, The Meaning of Life, the 100th episode was broadcast on September 1st, 2023. In 2015 Joe was inducted into the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Hall of Fame. Born in Dublin’s Mountjoy square and reared in Ballyfermot, he published his bestselling memoir, Just Joe in 2010. In 2015, his original research on the children killed during the Easter Rising 1916, unearthed for the first time information on the forty children who died violently that week. His bestselling book, Children of the Rising, The untold story of the young lives lost during Easter 1916, won nonfiction Book of the Year at the National Book awards in 2015. Children of the Troubles, the untold story of the young lives lost in the Northern Ireland Conflict written and researched by Joe Duffy and Freya McClements was published in October 2019, it also won Best Irish Published book at the An Post Irish book awards .