As part of the West Cork History Festival which took place last weekend, musician and activist Bob Geldof read a letter as part of an exclusive film reflecting on An Gorta Mór and more recent famines in Africa and elsewhere.
Geldof's powerful reading of the letter can be seen in the above video by our reporter Jackie Keogh.
The letter by Nicholas Marshal Cummins, a justice of the peace, was published in The London Times on Christmas Eve in 1846, and described in graphic detail the sight of dead and dying people in their homes on the West Cork headland of South Reen.
