20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
When Bono met Harry: U2 star and Point developer Crosbie shake on it at Dalkey Book Festival
The festival, founded by economist David McWilliams and his wife Sian Smyth, has been running since 2010 and continues to attract star Irish and international names to the south county Dublin village.
There was a strong interest from U2 band members and associates for a talk by film director Neil Jordan and author John Banville on the life of Roger Casement, the British diplomat who was executed in 1916 for treason after his participation in the Easter Rising.
Property developer Harry Crosbie told the Sunday Independent that his job on Friday night was to be 'the driver'. He said he was just there to 'pick up and drop off John Banville'.
Spotting Crosbie in his 1967 Mercedes Pagoda, Killiney resident Bono, who had a security team with him, made a bee line for him and shook his long-time friend's hand.
Crosbie, who helped develop The Point (now the 3Arena) and Vicar Street music venues, has said he will never write his autobiography because it would be too full of 'name-dropping'.
Bono's wife Ali Hewson also attended the same sold-out Casement talk, hosted by broadcaster Caroline Erskine, that took place in a marquee overlooking Dalkey Island.
U2 guitarist The Edge was also present at the same talk and was seen entering the marquee after the event began.
The festival's programme noted that Casement was described by his hangman in Pentonville prison as 'the bravest man I have ever had the displeasure to walk up the scaffold'.
'From Congo to Peru and back home to Ireland, Casement fought for the rights of dispossessed peoples wherever he saw them,' the programme said.
'A gay, Protestant, Irish revolutionary, a man of contradictions and complexity, he was only recently rehabilitated in Ireland. Is there a more heroic Irish figure than Roger Casement?'
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The festival concludes today with talks including one on rugby from former Ireland player Gordon D'Arcy and Paul Howard, journalist and author of the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly books. There is also an event with Charlie Mackesy, the author of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.
