To mark the 175th anniversary of the Irish Famine, a two-part series, The Hunger: The Story Of The Irish Famine begins on RTÉ1 tonight, Monday November 30, at 9.35pm, reports John Dolan for EchoLive.
Narrated by Liam Neeson, it reveals and develops a challenging analysis of the crisis, and is one of the first occasions that one of the most defining historical moments in national history has been comprehensively shown on television.
In Ireland, where half the population relied on the potato as their primary source of food, the famine caused the deaths of more than a million people and, between 1845 and 1855, the flight of a further two million to north America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Today, Ireland is the only country in the western world with a population lower than it had in the 1840s.
The TV series, made by Tyrone Productions and Create One with RTÉ and ARTÉ, in association with UCC and the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, presents a challenging, in-depth and comprehensive assessment of the worst humanitarian disaster of the 1800s — and the last major food crisis to impact Europe, Britain and Ireland.
Source: EchoLive. Full report here
