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Irish Examiner

Podcast Corner: Family tales of the Irish contribution to Manchester through the years

Hannah Donelon explains early on in the opening episode how the idea for her eight-part series, There's a Lot I Haven't Asked, came about: 'The impetus for this series came from a summer holiday to Ireland with my mum and dad in August 2024 as we took to the road visiting family in Galway and Kerry. Mum and Dad began telling me stories from their youth; some hilarious, some weird, some unbelievable, and some sad. And I thought to myself, wow, there's a lot I haven't asked.' The podcast series revolves around stories, scenes, and memories from the Irish diaspora in Manchester and the impact of its legacy on the present day. With original music composed and arranged by Michael McGoldrick, Donelon talked to 35 people over the course of just a month about their varied lives. Why Manchester in particular? Donelon explains: 'For two centuries and more, Manchester's story has been tied to Ireland. Since the city began its transformation into an industrial metropolis, the Irish have come, the large majority, to find work and have been enriching Mancunian cultural and social life in the process. The period of emigration we're looking at in this series is from around 1945 to 1975.' She says the Oral History Project in the UK promotes the idea that historical documents and books can't tell us everything about our past as often, they concentrate on famous people and big events and tend to miss out ordinary people talking about everyday life. Donelon gives us a whole cast of 'ordinary' voices in this story, including turf cutters hailing from Tyrone ('we could cut turf practically in the front garden') and men who studied engineering at UCC. The series is told in chronological order, beginning with what rural life in Ireland was like pre-emigration, following them to noisy Manchester, stepping into their social customs with them at dancehalls and céilí. Traditional Irish music (the ballad Skibbereen is sung on the second episode), dancing, and indeed storytelling are all recurring themes across the eight episodes, the last of which was released on Sunday. We could pick out any number of snippets from Donelon's characters to highlight, but Tommy on the second episode is a highlight, talking about how he made the journey to the UK from the west of Ireland in July 1952 at age 21: 'And believe it or not, which I can hardly believe myself, I came to Manchester by plane. I'd never even seen a plane in the sky. I don't think there was ever a plane flew over Mayo in those years. I remember hares running round. When I got on the plane, there was hares running round outside. And I used to hunt hares in Ireland with a greyhound and I thought, oh if that was in Mayo your life'd be in danger!' Read More The story of Barry Lyndon: 50 years since Stanley Kubrick made his epic in Ireland