New Euro TV feature on Mayo's Grace O’Malley

A new television feature on Grace O’Malley – Ireland’s Pirate Queen, with her biographer Anne Chambers, will be broadcast by the European TV channel ARTE at 5.30 p.m. on February 3 next.

Dedicated to culture and travel, the popular ARTE channel is broadcast across all European countries.

Filmed on location in Murrisk, Croagh Patrick, Louisburgh and Rockfleet Castle last summer, the feature, as Anne states, brings the amazing story of Grace O’Malley to a wider audience.

The author, a native of Castlebar, added: “This in turn will no doubt positively impact tourist footfall in the areas associated with her story, especially along the Wild Atlantic Way, and encourage her many fans worldwide to follow in the footsteps of our great Pirate Queen.”

Anne’s latest book, to be published in March, is entitled Living Lives: A Biographer’s Journey (Red Stripe Press), and presents the pros and cons of writing this particular branch of literature through her experiences over the past 40 years as a biographer of some 10 remarkable lives.

As well as Grace O’Malley, these include historical figures such as Lord Mayo, son of the Pirate Queen; 18th century Lord Sligo, known as ‘Champion of the Slaves’; prima donna Margaret Burke Sheridan; Ranji: Maharajah of Connemara; Eleanor Countess of Desmond, an amazing survivor of the Tudor wars in Ireland; and T.K. Whitaker ‘Irishman of the 20th Century’.