Aug 26, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min · 11 segments
On 18 February 2026 at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin, Laureate for Irish Fiction Éilís Ní Dhuibhne delivered her first annual Laureate Lecture entitled "The Tip of the Iceberg: Thoughts on the…
Éilís Ní DhuibhneGuest
Nuala HayesGuest
Máire McGrathHost
When I started, um, I announced blithely that I wanted to make a literary tour of Ireland to talk to readers and writers in every county and to discuss fiction and to consider the question, what makes a good story? As a matter of fact, I've been searching for answers to this question for most of my life, and it has brought me on wonderful voyages through libraries, archives, hills and valleys, blocks of flats, and city lanes in many parts of Ireland and in other parts of the world.
This evening, though, I'm asking you to join me on a quick sightseeing and maybe sound hearing trip back in time, more like a short bus trip than a voyage, to have a look at stories.
When did we humans start making fiction? To tell a story, you have to be able to talk in one way or another, and we don't know for sure when human beings began to speak.
The problem with information about speaking and storytelling is that we have no audio records of actual sound until t-towards the end of the 19th century AD.
It's thought that with the evolution of Homo sapiens, which is about 200,000 years ago, some sort of proto-language began.
And we don't have any document at all of what was being talked about, created, or invented until writing starts, and that's also rather late in the day under the gr- in the greater scheme of things.
The earliest writing from the middle of the Bronze Age is about 4,000 or 5,000 years old.
"Only archeology can reveal the truth" is a line we used to sing in my student days.
But it is to archeological evidence that we look for some sort of answer to the question of the origin of story.
An earlier piece of evidence of the human ability to make art is a figurine called the Lion Man.
On the 25th of August 1939, an archeologist, Otto Woltering, while excavating in a cave in Bavaria, came across scraps of an ivory figurine.
It was a significant discovery, but Otto's timing was unfortunate, to say the least, because one week later, on the 1st of September, Hitler invaded Poland and the Second World War broke out.
The pieces Woltering had fo-found were deposited in a local museum, where they remained in a box for 30 years.
A figurine, a statue with the body of a man and the head of a lion, began to emerge.
Analysis, further analysis and research and excavation, various restorations, culminating in a final restoration in 2013, just thir-13 years ago, were undertaken.
When I started, um, I announced blithely that I wanted to make a literary tour of Ireland to talk to readers and writers in every county and to discuss fiction and to consider the question, what makes a good story? As a matter of fact, I've been searching for answers to this question for most of my life, and it has brought me on wonderful voyages through libraries, archives, hills and valleys, blocks of flats, and city lanes in many parts of Ireland and in other parts of the world.
This evening, though, I'm asking you to join me on a quick sightseeing and maybe sound hearing trip back in time, more like a short bus trip than a voyage, to have a look at stories.
When did we humans start making fiction? To tell a story, you have to be able to talk in one way or another, and we don't know for sure when human beings began to speak.
The problem with information about speaking and storytelling is that we have no audio records of actual sound until t-towards the end of the 19th century AD.
It's thought that with the evolution of Homo sapiens, which is about 200,000 years ago, some sort of proto-language began.
And we don't have any document at all of what was being talked about, created, or invented until writing starts, and that's also rather late in the day under the gr- in the greater scheme of things.
The earliest writing from the middle of the Bronze Age is about 4,000 or 5,000 years old.
"Only archeology can reveal the truth" is a line we used to sing in my student days.
But it is to archeological evidence that we look for some sort of answer to the question of the origin of story.
An earlier piece of evidence of the human ability to make art is a figurine called the Lion Man.
On the 25th of August 1939, an archeologist, Otto Woltering, while excavating in a cave in Bavaria, came across scraps of an ivory figurine.
It was a significant discovery, but Otto's timing was unfortunate, to say the least, because one week later, on the 1st of September, Hitler invaded Poland and the Second World War broke out.
The pieces Woltering had fo-found were deposited in a local museum, where they remained in a box for 30 years.
A figurine, a statue with the body of a man and the head of a lion, began to emerge.
Analysis, further analysis and research and excavation, various restorations, culminating in a final restoration in 2013, just thir-13 years ago, were undertaken.
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