Nick Maxwell Eamon de Valera came to power in 1932 as the head of a minority Fianna Fáil government. The writing of a new constitution and its subsequent endorsement by the Irish people on 1 July 1937, albeit by a narrow majority—685,105 for, 526,945 against—helped him to achieve many of his major policy goals. Paradoxically, his strategy … Read more
‘Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler, Who made the Britons squeal, Sure before the fight is ended They will dance an Irish reel.’ (War News, 21 November 1940) Seán Russell, the IRA chief of staff, spent the summer of 1940 in a ‘very large’ villa in the leafy Grunewald, near Berlin, surrounded by extensive grounds and … Read more
As in other parts of the British Isles, ball games were a popular form of recreation in Ireland long before the modern versions of the games that became soccer and rugby were refined by English public schools during the nineteenth century and had their rules of play standardised by the Football Association (in 1863) and … Read more
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a devoted and courageous advocate of Irish freedom, but this aspect of his life has long been downplayed or ignored. When he was alive, his poetry was rarely published and his prose ignored. He lived as an outcast from his family and his class. Shelley despised the England he grew up … Read more
When examining the histories of particular marchlands (border regions) through the medieval and early modern periods, it is best practice to avoid sweeping and speculative theses and to begin by employing that much-maligned and least fashionable of historical approaches—the historical narrative. The most important, yet most neglected, of these interfaces were those of the Irish … Read more