Onwards to Narnia and Hame by the Sandy Loanen

ISLAND VOICES 2025

Lunchtime Lecture Event

'Onwards to Narnia and Hame by the Sandy Loanen'

With Dr Frank Ferguson

Thursday 27 November 2025, 1pm

Whittaker Suite, Guildhall

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 In this talk Dr Ferguson will chart the Ulster-Scots influences that helped shape C.S. Lewis’s life. He will trace the impact of family connections, place, language, and literature and demonstrate how these all played out in Lewis’s creative thinking. From his childhood home of Little Lea set amid the burns of East Belfast to the august halls of Oxford and Cambridge, this talk will illustrate the strong threads of Ulster-Scots culture, language and association that formed Lewis’s character. It will also argue that Lewis’s Ulster-Scots side appears in his work and life when least expected. Rather than being a buried treasure of his past life, Dr Ferguson will suggest it formed a vibrant and living element of his daily experience.

About the speaker:

 Frank Ferguson is the Research Director for English Language and Literature at Ulster University. An experienced researcher in literary studies, he has written and edited a number of publications on Irish and Northern Irish literature including, Ulster-Scots Writing, an Anthology, (Four Courts, 2008) Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: literature, religion and politics, c.1770-1920 (Four Courts 2009) John Hewitt, A North Light (Four Courts, 2013). He has managed a number of major literary and educational projects. He is the Chair of the John Hewitt Society, a Governor of the Linen Hall Library, and Chair of the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund.

Admission Free / Light refreshments provided from 12:30pm before each talk

View the full programme: 

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/70746036/island-voices-2025-programme

 To book your place contact T: 028 71 376 579 or email languages@derrystrabane.com

Duration

Entrance Fee