Clodagh Finn: Don’t forget the power of tenacious, ordinary people

We have been given a woman-focused history that illuminates the ordinary people who did the grunt work of 'keeping the lights on' in the world of revolution before it all went terribly wrong

In July 1924, May O’Callaghan emigrated to Moscow to work in the headquarters of the Communist International (Comintern), the organising body of world Communist Parties.

On May 24, 1993, this newspaper ran an article under the headline: “Whatever happened to May O’Callaghan?” In it, Roger Howe “turned sleuth to research the life and times of a Wexford writer and her connection to one of Austria’s most famous playwrights, Arthur Schnitzler”, as the standfirst writer rather poetically put it.

That link was all the more tantalising because Howe went on to write that Schnitzler’s “studies of heartless lust and morbid psychology were scandalous in their time”, and he wondered how “a (presumably) prim young Irishwoman” might be interested in him, or his work.