BY DONAL FALLON
A REVOLUTION IN PROFILES
Royal Irish Academy bursaries facilitated many interesting projects across the island during the ‘decade of centenaries’, including Brian Hanley’s podcast, Dirty war in Dublin, and Mary O’Mahony’s project around the 1920 republican hunger strikes in Cork. Aidan Doyle’s project, A revolution in profiles, is a free online dictionary of biography focusing on Offaly in the years of revolution (https://revolutioninprofilesoffaly.com/). Profiling over 100 people from the county, the searchable database includes not only republicans but also British soldiers, civilians, policemen and local politicians. It’s an easy-to-use resource, helping to understand how the revolution played out across one particular county.
A PART OF THE ABBEY SAVED
Dáithi Hanly was much more than just Dublin City Architect, leaving a legacy of good-quality public housing and important civic work to the city. A passionate conservationist, he saved what could be salvaged of the Abbey Theatre’s frontage during site clearance after the 1951 fire that gutted much of the interior of the national theatre. As the OPW note, ‘he instructed the demolition team to number each stone and carefully place them in a specific way in his back garden in Killiney, so that future generations could precisely reconstruct the façade exactly as it had been before’. Now these stones have been taken into the care of the OPW, something warmly welcomed by the Abbey itself. With much talk around the future redevelopment of the Abbey, will they perhaps return home?
48 CHERRYFIELD AVENUE
In Ranelagh, 48 Cherryfield Avenue was a particularly busy home during the Irish revolution. The residence of Robert and Úna Brennan, it was raided on several occasions during the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War owing to their republican activism, with Robert serving as Sinn Féin director of elections during the sweeping victory of 1918, and later opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty. A new plaque honours their daughter, Maeve Brennan, who became a distinguished journalist and writer in the United States. Best recalled for her work with The New Yorker, she was also a writer of short stories. The plaque was unveiled on 6 January by the lord mayor of Dublin following words by Sinéad Gleeson, novelist and editor. Brennan’s The long-winded lady has just been re-released by Peninsula Press with an introduction by Gleeson.
THE POSTMISTRESS WHO CHANGED HISTORY
The death of Kerry woman Maureen Flavin in December 2023 was international news, reported in the New York Times and beyond. She was, readers of that newspaper were informed, ‘a postal clerk on a remote stretch of the northwest Irish coast who, in 1944, on her 21st birthday, helped determine the outcome of the Second World War’. Maureen’s weather reports from Blacksod Bay, Co. Mayo, were passed on to Allied forces, with her observations leading Dwight D. Eisenhower to postpone the invasion of Normandy by 24 hours. In 2021 she received a medal from the United States House of Representatives, which noted that ‘her skill and professionalism were crucial in ensuring Allied victory, and her legacy will live on for generations to come’. Her story was previously told in director Gerry Gregg’s documentary Storm front in Mayo.
THE MEDIEVAL IRISH HISTORY PODCAST
Niamh Wycherley and Tiago Veloso Silva from Maynooth University are the team behind one of Ireland’s newest history podcasts, focusing on the medieval past. Featuring leading experts in the field, the podcast seeks to demonstrate ‘that medieval Irish history is complex and dynamic—not at all stuffy or static’. Particularly interesting was Seán Ó Hoireabhárd’s contributions on Queen Derbforgaill of Bréifne. Coming in at under an hour, these podcasts are a great introduction for anyone interested in learning more about the period. Listen in at https://podtail.com/en/podcast/the-medieval-irish-history-podcast-1/.
GAEL LINN COLLECTION
One of the most warmly received television documentaries over the Christmas period was Gael Linn ag 70 on TG4, exploring seven decades of the Irish-language organisation, with plenty of contemporary traditional music. The documentary made good use of the visual archives of Gael Linn, and readers may be interested to know that a significant part of this is hosted online through the archives website of the Irish Film Institute. Amharc Éireann, supported by a loan from Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, was a series of Irish-language newsreels that launched in 1956 and continued until 1964, when the increasing presence of television in Irish life made such newsreels largely redundant. The clips include things as diverse as student protestors from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) marching through the streets in 1961, and film director John Huston receiving Irish citizenship in 1964 at Government Buildings on Merrion Row. The clips can be viewed at www.ifiarchiveplayer.ie/gaellinn/.