In 1973, just two people attended the lonely funeral of Mayo Callaghan, an Irish immigrant in North London.

Few could have imagined that this quiet Irish woman, born in County Wexford in the 1880s,

had once been at the very heart of Soviet

power, working alongside figures like Stalin, Trotsky and Tito.

Now, in this episode, we're going to explore the secret life of Mayo Callan, and it's a fascinating

journey that begins in Wexford town in the most unlikely of places and then travels through

world revolutionary history, stopping at London and New York and ultimately ending up in the corridors

of power in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Hello and welcome to the Irish History podcast. My name is Finder.

In this episode, to delve into the extraordinary story of the Wexford woman, Mayo Callahan.

I'm joined by historian Morris Casey, who is the person who discovered the secret life of Mayo Callahan and revealed it in his book Hotel Lux. Now I will say before I continue,

I did interview Morris before I got this cold so you won't have my croaky voice the whole way

through. Now if you've not heard of Morris's book Hotel Looks, over the last year it's become

something of a cult classic in Irish history and it's no surprise because it's a really excellent read.

Now, while much of the book focuses on Mayo Callahan's life, it's titled Hotel Lux, because that building is central to this story.

It was a one-time posh hotel in Moscow that became a very different building in the 1920s,

and we picked that apart in our conversation as well. Now, if you want to get hotel looks,

it's out in paperback at the moment, and if Kindle is your thing, it's available for just

99 cents for the month of August. I've links to that beneath this episode. Now, before we

dive into Mayo Callahan's

extraordinary story, I have a big announcement as well. So obviously, there was no show

last week, but that's because there's been a bit of a breakthrough on the 1798 series that I've

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