2013: A LegenDerry Year, is a publication by Guildhall Press, Derry, and captures the UK City Of Culture Year 2013 in the city of Derry! The year was an historic one and it saw thousands of people flock from all over the world to Derry. It saw culture at its best and it showcased Derry as a city which can now compete with any world city with culture at its core!
This publication tells only part of the story from last year. Each individual has their own memories and this book explores a selection of those memories. This will help retain many memories and help recall others. It will remind those who were part of it, and it will be a souvenir for those who were not.
2013: A LegenDerry Year is a book filled with colour and vibrant photographs. From it’s front cover to its back cover, and every page in between.
‘‘2013: A LegenDerry Year’ is the definitive record of the City of Culture celebrations, which encompassed 500-plus events across the Northwest.
Images for the book – covering January to December 2013, and the 2010-to-2012 run-in – were contributed by the city’s own cameramen and women. So if you were at any of the major events there is a good chance you will be in the book!
The collection provides the perfect visual archive to a year, which saw visits from the likes of: Danny Boyle, Sam Shepard, Carol Ann Duffy, Lee Child, Robbie Williams, Paul Greengrass, the Radio One Big Weekend, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the Turner Prize 2013, Lumiere, Other Voices, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chic and many more.
There is extensive coverage of the city’s very own cultural community, amateur and professional, who participated in the non-stop cavalcade of festivals and fun. Pictured playing their part are: the late, great Seamus Heaney, Field Day, Brian Friel, Snow Patrol, Dana, The Undertones, Bronagh Gallagher, Neil Hannon, Willie Doherty and SOAK, to name but a select few.
And there is also, of course, a full pictorial review of the year’s most spectacular ‘in-house’ festival, The Return of Colmcille Pageant, which featured thousands of performers and tens of thousands of spectators.
TV producer Phil Redmond – who is chair of the City of Culture judging panel – provided the introduction to ‘2013: A LegenDerry Year’, and the book was edited by Garbhan Downey. Support for the publication was received from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Culture Company.’
This is a book which I haven’t read from cover to cover. But over the coming weeks and months I will have read each and every word. It’s a book to delve into when a memory returns; when a thought recurs, or when I just want to smile. It’s a book to treasure and it’s a memory I will certainly treasure forever.
Phil Redmond says, ‘2013 was a great year, as this book illustrates. It should be remembered not as the end of anything but the beginning of something else. A stepping stone from a shared, if divided, past – toward a common future’.
Garbhan Downey, editor, says that ‘in 2013, Derry enjoyed its highest number of tourists ever. By a country mile. During one event, Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann in August, the city’s population expanded to four times its normal size. And by the time the year was over, everyone, from the New York Times to the BBC, agreed that this was truly a cultural haven on earth’.
I have many fond memories of 2013 in Derry. But my most precious must surely be, my presence on the night that Seamus Heaney read his work at Derry’s Millenium Theatre. One of Ireland’s greatest poets. One of the world’s greatest literary folk. I was fortunate to experience a magical,emotional and truly awe inspiring night in his company.
2013: A LegenDerry Year is available from www.ghpress.com, Little Acorns Bookstore (Derry), and all good bookshops!
North West Culture Gal 