Nick Maxwell At the top of Dublin’s Grafton Street, at the corner of Stephen’s Green, stands a handsome triumphal arch—still referred to by some locals as ‘traitors’ gate’—which commemorates the ‘officers, non-commissioned officers and men’ of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who fell in the second Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902). One will search Ireland in vain to find a … Read more
The reappraisals that occurred during the centenary of the death of William Morris (1834-96) further confirmed him as one of the outstanding figures of nineteenth-century Britain. A multi-talented individual he achieved prominence in the arts as a poet, novelist, designer, printer, stained-glass artist, weaver, dyer and, to a rather lesser degree, as a painter. He … Read more
I have a vast heap of trouble on my hands as I must be very soon preparing no small number of the Newfoundland Regiment for death. Those villains who formed a plot to take and plunder the town, were strictly bound together with the infamous link of the United Irishmen’s Oath, and are supposed to … Read more
Feagh M’Hugh of the mountain— Feagh M’Hugh of the glen— Who has not heard of the Glenmalur Chief, And the feats of his hard-riding men? When these lines by Thomas D’Arcy McGee were published in The Nation in 1854, one wonders if indeed any of its readers had heard much about the feats of the … Read more
Sir,—In his excellent essay, ‘A Tale of Two Generals’, Jim Smyth states(p.36), ‘captured French soldiers were treated as bona fide prisonersof war, and returned fairly promptly to France’ after the battle ofCulloden in April 1746. It is sadly not the case that all the ‘French’prisoners taken were accorded prisoner-of-war status and returned toFrance. The following … Read more