Marianne O’Kane Boal reports on the first cultural partnership between the Port of Cork and Belfast Harbour
The title ‘Kings of the Tides,’ is taken from the poem The Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait by Dylan Thomas, and is intended to capture the majesty, mystery and power of a bygone age. The poem opens with the lines:
The bows glided down, and the coast/
Blackened with birds took a last look/
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;/
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
The scene is set for a journey back in time to the heyday of the shipping era and a celebration of the majestic vessels that travelled the seas. While the romance of the seas is recalled, shipping was and is a serious business. As Peter Murray remarked: ‘…these images of ships cresting the waves, are a splendid evocation of the era of steam and sail, full of the romance of travel and adventure. On another level they tell a prosaic story of tonnages, taxation and capacities.’ (‘Cresting the Waves’ IAR, Summer 2005 p96).
Muirne Lydon reveals the original brilliance of Murillo’s Prodigal Son as degraded varnish and old restorations are painstakingly removed from the 17th-century series at the National Gallery of Ireland
Using a selection of germane quotations Rolf Loeber recalls his mentor, the late Maurice Craig; their literary exchange taking the form of a tete-a-tete.
Cosmopolitan yet connected to local issues, Mervyn Wingfield, 7th Viscount Powerscourt played a prominent role in promoting Ireland’s cultural institutions at a pivotal time in their early history, writes Philip McEvansoneya
