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In this richly illustrated lecture Dr. Ridgway will discuss the Howard family’s many achievements, while also considering how some members of the family lost their heads while others kept them.

In 1924 Iris and Antonio Origo—an Anglo-American heiress and an Italian marchese—purchased La Foce, a vast Italian estate with a half-ruined, 15th-century villa at its core. Located in the Val d’Orcia, a spectacularly wild and desolate valley in southern Tuscany, the restoration of the estate became Iris and Antonio’s lifetime project.  Katia Lysy, granddaughter of Iris and Antonio Origo, tells an enthralling story of love, war, and rebirth, all documented by new and old photographs from the Origo family archives.

Presented by Katia Lysy

Join Robert O’Byrne as he tells the stories—sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous—behind great Irish country houses, their rise to glory, and eventual fall into dereliction.