Nick Maxwell There are certain resonances between past and present in the current issue (30 years on from our first, in spring 1993, incidentally). Thomas P. Power’s article on the Pastorini prophecy (pp 26–9), which predicted the destruction of Protestantism in 1825, reminds us that irrational conspiracy theories—whether it be Pastorini, the Protocols of Zion or, in … Read more
A century ago, in December 1922, at the height of the Civil War, poet W.B. Yeats was nominated to the Senate of the newly established Irish Free State. In January of that year he had participated in the cultural programme of the Irish Race Congress in Paris. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize … Read more
To be aired on TG4, 9.30pm, Wednesday 7 December 2022 Over three nights in April 1922, thirteen Protestant men were shot dead in West Cork. According to Peter Hart’s 1998 book The IRA and its enemies, they were shot because they were Protestants—sectarian killings carried out by members of the IRA—and ‘the nationalist revolution had also … Read more
While not in the vanguard of the War of Independence, Donegal became the scene of the last stand-up fight between the IRA (pro- and anti-Treaty) and British military (in the ‘Pettigo triangle’), with the latter using heavy artillery for the first time in Ireland since 1916. On the outbreak of the Civil War some of these … Read more