This presentation explores the parallels between the careers of Conor Cruise O’Brien and Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the one-time Irish revolutionary who became a Liberal Conservative Father of Canadian Confederation. Both men were politically engaged public intellectuals who abandoned their earlier radicalism to become uncompromising opponents of Irish revolutionary republicanism, and both were deeply influenced by the writings of Edmund Burke – so much so, that McGee’s interpretation of Burke’s life and thought anticipates the central arguments that O’Brien adumbrated almost a century and a half later, in The Great Melody.

David A. Wilson is a Professor in the Celtic Studies Programme and History Department at the University of Toronto. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a recipient of the University of Toronto’s Outstanding Teaching Award, he has published and edited twelve books, including a prize-winning two-volume biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. His latest book, Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police (2022), received the Champlain Society’s Chalmers Award, the C.P. Stacey Prize in Canadian Military History, and the Peter M. Toner Research Publication Award.

This event is in-person in the Lanyon Building, 0G/074, and online via Teams. It will be followed by a drinks reception.