At the October meeting actor Colin Pinney gave an absorbing talk on the poet W B Yeats and his lifelong, but unrequited, love for the beautiful Maud Gonne. Yeats proposed to Maud many times but was turned down on the grounds that they would always be separated by politics. He wanted an Ireland free of British rule but did not share Maud’s zeal for an armed uprising.
In addition to poetry, Yeats wrote plays and won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 12923. His poem, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ was recited by Colin to applause from his listeners.