By Stan Moore Vexillology, the study of flags, reveals how deeply intertwined Ireland’s flags are with its history. This year, 2025, marks the 230th anniversary of the Orange Order and the enduring legacy of the colour orange in Ireland’s religious, cultural and political landscapes. ORIGIN OF ORANGE Orange began not as a colour but as … Read more
By Sandrine Tromeur In the late 1630s and early 1640s, a handful of Irish Catholic merchants settled in La Rochelle, a French port city largely dominated by an élite of Protestant (Huguenot) mercantile families. Over time, the small Irish group gradually grew in number, and by the 1670s it had developed into a nascent community … Read more
By Conor Robison For an O’Neill, Charlemont fort was a symbol of defeat that bore the name of their conqueror. Purpose-built by Lord Mountjoy in the heart of Ulster on the banks of the Blackwater near the foundations of an earlier English fort previously vanquished by the arms of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, it … Read more
By Patrick McDonagh The National Library of Ireland (NLI) is one of the nation’s leading cultural heritage institutions, charged with the safe custody of a staggering number of manuscripts of historical significance. Among its more famed collections are the literary papers of twentieth-century authors as well as material from the Irish revolutionary era, but arguably … Read more
Sir,—I’ll let readers judge the relative merits of my Platform piece (HI 33.3, May/June 2025), ‘Greaves, Connolly and the British Army’, and Anthony Coughlan’s response in the last issue. However, I would like to comment on the May 1901 photograph of James Connolly and other members of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP), reproduced on … Read more