Recognition was slow in coming for the novelist Jean Rhys whose only comment, upon receiving the WH Smith Award at the age of 76, was: "It has come too late". If only the Kilkenny-born writer and historian, Hubert Butler, had had such an early start. "Discovered" at the age of 85, when a collection of his essays was published in book form for the first time, Butler spent his last six years knowing his work had not gone unnoticed.

Unlike Rhys, however, who was generally assumed to be dead after some minor success with her early novels, Butler's lifetime had not been spent in obscurity.

His attempts to bring the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs in war-time Croatia to the attention of the public, culminating in a walk-out by the Papal Nuncio of a public meeting addressed by Butler in 1952, led to him being ostracised from a community which, at the time, did not wish to face unpalatable truths.

There was much more to his life than this single incident, however, and many of the 200 people who attended a conference at the weekend celebrating the centenary of Butler's birth wanted to know more about this remarkable man.

"What a "conference," declared the Observer columnist, Neal Ascherson, at the end of a riveting two-and-a-half days of discussion during which writers, academics and historians, including Roy Foster, Terence Brown, Edna Longley, John Banville and Chris Agee, examined Butler's work and its relevance.

Butler, who lived in Kilkenny but travelled extensively, wrote with passion but also great clarity about subjects ranging from life in Leningrad in the 1930s, where he taught English, to the Fethard-on-Sea boycott; from the Jewish children shipped off from Paris to Auschwitz in 1942, to the importance of preserving Kilkenny Castle.

In essays which often covered fewer than 10 pages, he could tell more about world history than the most inflated blockbuster or television series, said Foster.

He was, above all, an obsessive seeker and exposer of the truth, no matter how uncomfortable the consequences. "Hubert couldn't see a safely-moored boat without wanting to rock it, and send ripples out to the edge of the harbour and beyond," Foster observed.

Much of this writing he did from the drawing room at Maidenhall, Bennetsbridge, the family home which he inherited in 1941. His writing desk faced a window from which he could view the Kilkenny and Carlow countryside stretching as far as the Blackstairs mountains.

That he chose to remain in Kilkenny might seem odd for a man with so much to say about international affairs, but as novelist and Irish Times Associate Literary Editor, John Banville, pointed out, Butler believed that local history was more important than national history. "This is one of many variations on an abiding theme in his essays: the fatuousness of our modern-day concern for the universal at the expense of the particular."

Other paradoxes were teased out: Anglo-Irish by descent, Butler was a Protestant who never flinched from challenging the Catholic Church's stranglehold on Irish life. But he was also an Irish nationalist. He had, said Ascherson, "a steady faith in the virtues of national independence and statehood", as long as they were not distorted by xenophobia.

Listening to Ascherson and several speakers before him, it was hard not to regret that Butler was not around today to address the fear and mistrust engendered by the arrival of asylum-seekers and refugees into Ireland. "Germans were ejected from the Tyrol and Slavs from northern Italy," he wrote. "What has this to do with nationalism, which is comprehensive and based on neighbourliness and a common devotion to the land in which you live?"

Although "not much of a churchgoer", it was one of Butler's "crowning glories" that he could remain a member of the Church of Ireland while pursuing the sort of free inquiry to which he was devoted, said Robert Tobin, a graduate student at Merton College, Oxford.

He was not enthusiastic about ecumenism, believing that Catholics and Protestants could live in harmony while respecting their fundamental differences in matters of religious practice, said Tobin, who is writing a thesis on Southern Protestant intellectual life after independence.

While some asserted that Butler's views constituted a form of bigotry, Tobin believed his assertion of separateness was rooted in reasoned opposition rather than sectarian prejudice.

In a rare moment of controversy at the conference, which was held at the Parade Tower in Kilkenny, one audience member, Jack Lane, chose to disagree. Butler, he claimed, had a "very racist view" of Irish nationalism.

The evidence for this was to be found in an election speech made by the writer in Stoneyford in 1955, when he ran for Kilkenny County Council as a "voice for the minority", in which Butler said the Protestant community was the principal focus of independent thinking and plain speaking in Ireland.

"Most of us can act independently because we have independence in our blood," he said in a speech reported in the Kilkenny People and published in the posthumous collection, The Land of Nod. Referring to an apology to Butler, for his treatment following the Papal Nuncio incident, given by the Mayor of Kilkenny, Paul Cuddihy, at the outset of the conference, Jack Lane said an apology might also be due in the opposite direction.

Terence Brown, professor of Anglo-Irish literature at Trinity College, Dublin, replied that those words may sound offensive today. In the period in which he had made the remarks, however, the view he expressed was also the view of serious Catholic commentators.

Butler's contribution to the Irish Literary Revival; his remarkable study of Irish and European origins, Ten Thousand Saints, and his relentless investigation of events in war-time Yugoslavia, were other topics covered, large enough for entire conferences in themselves.

But the event was not without its lighter moments. Personal reminiscences about Butler, whose sense of humour shines through in his writing, brought frequent bouts of laughter. The writer Joseph Hone, who grew up at Maidenhall, recalled Myles na gCopaleen arriving at Maidenhall for a party or a celebration, or perhaps the Kilkenny debates which Butler organised.

"Myles is next to the driver, a small suitcase on his lap. But he can't open the door. A smile - he waves vaguely at Hubert, like Marie Antoinette in a coach. Hubert pulls the handle, Myles pushes. And suddenly Myles flies out on to the gravel, all in a heap, the little cardboard case flown open, spilling its only contents on the gravel - a pair of dirty pyjamas and a half-full bottle of Jameson.

"The dogs start to worry the tasty pyjamas. The bottle rolls slowly to a stop. But Hubert has seen nothing. `Myles, how nice to see you. I think you're in the Green Room'."

While the weekend's event drew people from five countries other than Ireland, 30 per cent of the attendance came from Kilkenny - a local and international mix which would undoubtedly have pleased Hubert Butler. There was also warm approval for the apology issued by Mayor Cuddihy on behalf of the people of Kilkenny.

"Never in my whole life," said Neal Ascherson, "have I heard a public official speak with such candour and nobility."

The last remaining copies of the four collections of essays published in Ireland by The Lilliput Press were snapped up over the weekend. A new anthology from the same publisher is on the way.