Maiden City Festival Weblog

On this Remembrance Sunday the Maiden City Festival has launch a small website dedicated to the ‘The Derrys’, the 10th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. This is the final part of the Festival programme which was based on the book was first published in 1991 and published as an updated second edition in this past year. The book has the benefit of reminisces of two old soldiers, Jim Donaghy from Londonderry and Leslie Bell from Moneymore.

Our video provides a short introduction presented by the author at the launch of the project in the Playhouse, though this was followed during Festival week by a full multi-media presentation. The Launch also drew attention to how the interest in the story of The Derrys sparked wider interest in the history of the First World War, and how that led to interest in the names of the Fallen on the City’s War Memorial.

Throughout Festival week, a number of young men explored the story within the book and on the Friday of the Festival week, these workshops provided a dramatic interpretation the books themes. It is a distinction of this project that the young men from Londonderry who explored the story of The Derrys are of the same age as those who volunteered for the Great War.

The week’s project is wrapped up in a song first performed at the launch of the project, by Josh Goforth. He had been thinking for some time of writing a song about soldiers serving abroad, with contemporary conflicts in mind. When he was a lad he would ask his grandfather about time served in World War Two. When he asked his grandfather where he fought, the answer was ‘Far Across the Sea’. The words seem as apt for our own generation as it was for his grandfather’s.