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Flight from Prague – The Making of a Refugee

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A Lunch Time Session at the Linen Hall

Friday 26th September 2025
Flight from Prague – The Making of a Refugee
by Michael Lewis

Flight from Prague – The Making of a RefugeeIt was another ordinary Friday in Belfast, though the Linen Hall Library has a way of turning the ordinary into something more. Its windows gave off their familiar glow onto Donegall Square, drawing people inside from the damp pavements. I was there for a lunchtime session on Flight from Prague – The Making of a Refugee, a book that traces one family’s escape from Czechoslovakia between September 1938 and November 1939, and the lifelong shaping of identity that followed.

The talk took place upstairs, the shelves surrounding us heavy with other stories of flight, exile, and memory. The audience was mixed – familiar library regulars, some younger faces, and others who seemed to carry their own connections to displacement. There was a quietness in the room, a listening quality, as Michael Lewis began to speak.

Flight from Prague is not a political chronicle so much as an intimate testimony – the making of a refugee both as a lived experience and as a historical inevitability. Lewis read aloud from his book, his voice carrying the weight of a son’s inheritance: his father, Harry Lewy and mother Edith became figures not just of survival but of transformation. Hearing their story told this way made it clear that exile does not finish at the border; it travels on, shaping the rest of a life.

The conversation did not slip into nostalgia or sentimentality. Instead, it had the texture of testimony – steady, unsparing, yet humane. Lewis connected his family’s flight with present-day movements of people, the refugees who arrive in Belfast now, escaping wars in our own time. The past and present overlapped in a way that gave the session an immediacy beyond memory.

When questions opened, the tone remained gentle. The audience asked with curiosity, yes, but also with care – as though knowing that stories of loss and survival demand a different kind of listening.

Stepping back outside, into the square and the city beyond, I carried the sense that Flight from Prague is not only a story of 1939, but a mirror held up to our world today. The making of a refugee is not just history; it is still unfolding, here and now.

 

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Belfast Maritime Festival 2025

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Belfast Maritime Festival Brings Crowds Despite Torrential Rain

The Belfast Maritime Festival 2025 returned to the city’s quaysides last weekend, drawing thousands of visitors to celebrate the city’s seafaring heritage — despite heavy rain that persisted throughout Sunday afternoon.

The three-day event, which ran from Friday, 12 September, to Sunday, 14 September, featured a few tall ships, naval vessels (including the Irish Lights vessel ILV Granuaile), Belfast Maritime Festival 2025live music, food stalls, and family entertainment across Queen’s Quay and Sailortown. Organisers reported strong attendance across the weekend, with Saturday’s clearer skies drawing the biggest crowds.

By contrast, Sunday was very wet indeed. I visited in the afternoon, and the rain was relentless — at times a mist, and at other times a sharp downpour that soaked through coats and shoes. The quayside was slick with water, umbrellas jostled in the crowd, and yet the festival pressed on with good humour. Families pushed prams wrapped in rain covers, children splashed through puddles, and food stalls sent up steam and savoury smells that carried on the damp air.

There was still plenty to see: open-deck tours of the visiting tall ships, live traditional music that lifted spirits in the rain, and exhibitions marking the 120th anniversary of Belfast’s shipbuilding story. One highlight was the sight of naval vessels moored alongside the quayside, their crews welcoming visitors despite the weather.

Speaking to attendees, the mood was stoic but cheerful. “It wouldn’t be Belfast without the rain,” one visitor said. Another described the festival as “wet, but wonderful,” summing up the mix of soggy clothes and resilient enjoyment.

Organisers declared the event a success. A spokesperson said: “We are delighted to see so many people braving the elements to celebrate Belfast’s maritime story. The rain didn’t dampen the spirit — in fact, it added to the atmosphere.”

The Belfast Maritime Festival has become a fixture in the city’s cultural calendar, and plans are already underway for its 2026 return.

 

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100 years of Northern Ireland: how has it gone?

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100 years of Northern Ireland: how has it gone?

2021 is the hundredth anniversary of the formation of Northern Ireland. This Decade of Centenaries panel discussion, hosted by well-known local broadcaster, Tara Mills, Decade of Centenaries panel discussion: 100 years of Northern Irelandwill look at the last one hundred years from a range of different perspectives.

Panellists for the session are:

  • Lord Paul Bew, Chair of the Northern Ireland Office Centenary Historical Advisory Panel
  • Prof Mary E Daly, University College Dublin and Royal Irish Academy
  • Prof Thomas Hennessey, Professor of Modern British and Irish History, Canterbury Christchurch University
  • Dr Marie Coleman, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast
  • Dr Seán Byers, Researcher at Trademark Belfast and author of a number of pieces on trade unions, economic and political strategies

You can submit written questions to the panel during the event.

A sign language interpreter will be signing the event.

 

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Street View: Matthew Finn

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Belfast Exposed is delighted to present Street View: Matthew Finn which features four projects – Mother, Uncle, Wife and Son – by artist Matthew Finn. Finn uses the people and events directlyStreet View: Matthew Finn surrounding his life as visual references for projects that sometimes take years to realise. With no commercial constraints or deadlines, Finn’s subjects are people that are important in his life.

Over a thirty-year period, from 1987 onwards, Matthew Finn collaborated with his mother, Jean, to document her everyday life through a series of portraits taken in her home in Leeds. This series, Mother, is a record of the ordinary, of a daily routine with which we are all familiar. It is also a record of the gradual shift from middle age to old age, and, in Jean’s case, to the onset of mixed dementia and a move from the family home into residential care.

Finn’s father never lived with him and his mother and many times he would make promises that he never kept. His mother would wait to be picked up for a night out with Finn’s Father. Finn can remember her standing there dressed in her fawn, mohair coat, and he wouldn’t turn up. Eventually, she would retreat upstairs to take off her makeup and going-out clothes and return to the TV. This seemed to happen a lot.

Finn’s father is not present in these photographs just as he wasn’t in their lives and yet he haunts these images. He was also the main reason that this project became so important to both Finn and his mother.

Matthew Finn’s series Uncle follows a man through his journey around his home in a suburb of Leeds. The unremarkable story becomes poignant and remarkable through the time span of the collaboration as we follow Uncle Des from the age of 58 up to his death aged 84 in 2014. For over 25 years Finn followed his uncle documenting the everyday habits and quirks that we recognise in ourselves and how we utilise our space. Seeing Des struggle to understand a microwave, choose between potted plants, or being caught in the act during his annual task of cleaning the windows at Christmas, offers the viewer a unique insight into how time is spent at home. Ultimately, through these images, we slowly follow Des into his final moments.

Finn’s partner Martina was also happy to continue his obsession with photographing everybody in his life in his series entitled Wife. Relationships are about sharing and communicating. In this way, this collaboration is not based on unconditional love but an equal voice between Finn and his wife. As a result, this partnership is as much about Finn’s journey as it is Martina’s presence within the pictures.

The final work from Matthew Finn is entitled: Son. A person always there to be photographed. The ultimate expression of the photographer’s unique vision. A subject that never says no. But, how to photograph a baby, a young boy, and then a child with independent thought?

Finn started making pictures of his son Sebastian when was upset or unhappy but Finn soon realised that wasn’t who his son is. The photographs were not about Finn or his son. They were representations of a photographer weighed down by his own understanding of the visual histories of children in art photography. Finn had to learn that when your child says no it is sacred and should not be broken even for a photographic opportunity.

Street View

Street View provides a multimedia exhibition experience to increase the accessibility and visibility of photography on the streets of Belfast. Street View is a large digital window display, complimented with audio narratives, that showcases contemporary artwork by internationally renowned and local emerging photographers to an external audience on the streets of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.

Belfast Exposed believe photography is for everyone, it is accessible, meaningful and has the ability to tell stories, allowing us to create dialogue and reflect upon our history, inform our present and inspire a positive future. Street View is another opportunity to extend our vision beyond the confines of the gallery.

 

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