ELLA YOUNG was an Irish poet, writer for children and mythologist who was educated at Trinity College Dublin. She later emigrated to the USA and held an academic post at the University of California. She was a friend of Patrick Pearse and supported the Republican movement. MAUD GONNE was an artist, actress, suffragette and activist in the Republican movement. She was a muse and inspiration for many works by W.B. Yeats, who proposed to her several times. MARK WILLIAMS is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

He is a specialist in medieval Irish and Welsh language and literature, and is the author of Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton University Press, 2016), and The Celtic Myths That Shape the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021).