By Anna Rose Garvey Gael Linn was established in 1953 to promote and revitalise Irish language and culture through a variety of means, which would eventually include music, film and educational initiatives. A most successful and accessible early venture was the establishment in 1956 of the Amharc Éireann newsreel, the first regular indigenous cinema newsreel … Read more
By Zoë Reid On 18 April 2026 the National Archives will publish online the first census of the Irish Free State, an extraordinary corpus of more than 700,000 individual household returns which were to have been completed on the night of 18 April 1926. Fully searchable and free to access, the census reveals the early … Read more
By Brian Casey Drinking at the wake of a dead person is a long-standing custom at Irish funerals. This is often about sharing memories of the deceased person and to help with the grieving process. Occasionally, however, extreme drunkenness at funerals in Glasnevin led to violence and assaults on cemetery staff. Two in particular were … Read more
By Damian Murphy The modern origins of Kenmare demesne date back to the early eighteenth century and a Queen Anne-style house built (1724–5) by Sir Valentine Browne (1695–1736), 5th Baronet and 3rd Viscount Kenmare, on an estate inherited from his father, the exiled Nicholas Browne (1664–1720), a Jacobite who had forfeited his life interest in … Read more
By Janus T. Saito-Madsen In Denmark we have a word for what’s happening to history on television—‘Bubberification’, named after Bubber (Niels Christian Meyer), a beloved children’s TV host who now fronts major history documentaries despite having no historical training. The name is affectionate but the phenomenon it describes is not. The pattern will be familiar … Read more