Julian O’ Neill – The Lines We Cross: Finding local war heroes and how this book evolved
The Whitwell Room, The Talbot Hotel, Oundle, PE8 4EA
Friday 20th November 2026
What might happen when men who fought alongside one another in the First World War returned home to Ireland and found themselves in another kind of conflict?
The novel begins at the Somme in 1916 and follows the main characters' lives through the turbulent years ahead.
Eighteen-year-old Ulsterman Billy McBride leaves his family farm for the battlefields of the Somme, where a single encounter changes three lives forever.
Ruari O’Donnell, a young Catholic with a dark secret, saves Billy’s life, not knowing that fate will bring them together once more…on opposite sides of another conflict.
Marion Maguire, pregnant and alone after being unwittingly abandoned, faces devastating loss and unthinkable choices that lead her from a Magdalene laundry to a world of gunrunners and rebels.
The Lines We Cross brings the killing fields of France and the turbulent struggle for Irish Independence vividly to life.
An evocative and visceral novel that doesn’t shy away from the realities of war and conflict.
Julian was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, trained as a dentist, and worked for six years in Oral and Maxillofacial surgery before specialising in orthodontics. He became an NHS Consultant in Northamptonshire, where he still lives.
He has s a long-standing interest in twentieth-century military history and has travelled extensively through Northern Europe, visiting battlefields, cemeteries and memorials. At university, he was a member of his University’s Air Squadron; the RAF taught him how to fly an aeroplane. Later, after moving to London, he joined the TA, where the army tried to teach him how to jump out of one.
The Lines We Cross is his first novel, but he has also co-authored over forty scientific publications and nine Master's theses, all hopefully considered non-fiction!
The novel begins at the Somme in 1916 and follows the main characters' lives through the turbulent years ahead.
Eighteen-year-old Ulsterman Billy McBride leaves his family farm for the battlefields of the Somme, where a single encounter changes three lives forever.
Ruari O’Donnell, a young Catholic with a dark secret, saves Billy’s life, not knowing that fate will bring them together once more…on opposite sides of another conflict.
Marion Maguire, pregnant and alone after being unwittingly abandoned, faces devastating loss and unthinkable choices that lead her from a Magdalene laundry to a world of gunrunners and rebels.
The Lines We Cross brings the killing fields of France and the turbulent struggle for Irish Independence vividly to life.
An evocative and visceral novel that doesn’t shy away from the realities of war and conflict.
Julian was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, trained as a dentist, and worked for six years in Oral and Maxillofacial surgery before specialising in orthodontics. He became an NHS Consultant in Northamptonshire, where he still lives.
He has s a long-standing interest in twentieth-century military history and has travelled extensively through Northern Europe, visiting battlefields, cemeteries and memorials. At university, he was a member of his University’s Air Squadron; the RAF taught him how to fly an aeroplane. Later, after moving to London, he joined the TA, where the army tried to teach him how to jump out of one.
The Lines We Cross is his first novel, but he has also co-authored over forty scientific publications and nine Master's theses, all hopefully considered non-fiction!
Price
Ticket price incl. booking fee
£6.50 - £8.67
