Nick Maxwell – Page 1134 – History Ireland

Bunreacht na hÉireann: a study of the Irish text, Micheál Ó Cearúil. (Coiste Uile-Pháirtí an Oireachtais ar an mBunreacht/The All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, £15). ISBN 0707664004

On 20 August 1936, Éamon de Valera received ‘A Plan for a basic constitutional law and an Initial Version of a Draft’ from a legal adviser in the Department of External Affairs, John Hearne. That document marked the genesis of Bunreacht na hÉireann. By October 1936 the ‘plan’ had grown to seventy-eight articles and other … Read more

The Crowned Harp: Policing in Northern Ireland, Graham Ellison and Jim Smyth (Pluto Press, pb £14.99, hb £45) ISBN 0745313930, 0745313981

My most vivid memory of Northern Ireland remains the police stations in West Belfast. I was familiar from newspaper and television coverage with the murals and graffiti splashed walls that describe the depths of the loyalties and hatreds that have plagued that region. But it was the sight of police officers peering through wire-mesh and … Read more

Images of Erin

Throughout history, literary and graphic images of Ireland have taken various female forms. Among many examples are the demure, pure and desirable maiden, complete with harp, who adorned seventeenth-century coins. There’s the eighteenth-century version, a plain looking but smiling Hibernia breast feeding pygmy-sized politicians; other times depicted as part freedom fighter part vestal virgin. There … Read more

The Act of Union: 200 years on

There could be no more suitable venue for a seminar on the Act of Union than the Irish House of Lords chamber rendered redundant by the votes of its members in 1800. Preserved intact when the Bank of Ireland bought the parliament building in 1802 (and proceeded to gut the Commons), the Lords chamber is … Read more

The Tommy Gun–the Irish connection

The Thompson submachine gun or ‘Tommy gun’ as it became known, started life on the drawing board of retired US Army Lt. Col. Marcellus Thompson sometime during 1916. He was an enthusiastic gun designer with a lot of ideas of his own. He wanted to develop an automatic rifle from his personal specifications. His designs … Read more