Nick Maxwell From the founding of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) to Easter Week 1916 can be described as the organisation’s heroic period. It would survive the Rising by a further twenty years: until the Civil War in form and occasional actions and campaigns, then in suspended animation until 1934, and reviving for one more year before … Read more
Dáire Keogh The forthcoming beatification of Edmund Rice will inevitably focus attention on his life and deeds. Yet, the absence of a diary, memoirs or a contemporary biographer restrict our image of the man’s personality to mere glimpses. Above all, his modesty and reticence make him an elusive subject … Read more
Was cricket in late nineteenth-century Ireland really an élitist activity limited to the middle and upper classes? Tom Hunt assesses the evidence for County Westmeath. In July 1893 members of the Ringtown Cricket Club, Co. Westmeath, assembled on the shores of Lough Derravaragh to make the journey across the lake to play a match against … Read more
Daniel Gahan Few events in modern Irish history, especially in the history of revolutionary nationalism, haunt the imagination like the massacre that took place in the townland of Scullabogue in southern County Wexford on 5 June 1798. The killing of well over a hundred government supporters by rebels has … Read more
High-frequency history This issue marks the start of the second year of History Ireland as a bi-monthly publication. Judging by the response to last issue’s readers’ survey (and thank you to all those who took the time to respond—we are still poring over the entrails), this new departure has gone down very well with our … Read more