Nick Maxwell By Angus Mitchell On 24 November 1922, Erskine Childers—the renowned author and anti-Treaty republican—was executed by a military firing squad of the Irish Free State in Beggar’s Bush barracks. During the century since his tragic dénouement, various efforts have been made to explain Childers and ‘the metamorphosis of a stiff-upper-lip Boy’s Own novelist into a … Read more
By Evan Comerford ‘The present famine, as all other famines in Ireland, has been the direct result of the system of land tenure which is maintained there’ (Charles Stewart Parnell, address to US House of Representatives, Washington, 2 February 1880). In 1879 Ireland was on the brink of famine once more. A succession of poor … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons Early in the morning of 14 January 1843, the island residents of Lough Ree returned home from the wake of their neighbour Betty Martin. Thady Shea, his adult sons, Bryan and Pat, and their friend John Lally went to the house of Michael Killian on Inchenagh Island. Killian worked the malt kiln … Read more
By Andreas Boldt Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), the German composer and pianist, is one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. In his 30s Beethoven started to suffer hearing problems and by 1814 he had gone completely deaf. He gave up performing in public but continued to compose until his death … Read more
Athy, Co. Kildare By Damian Murphy The skyline of Athy was transformed in the early 1960s when both of its nineteenth-century Catholic churches, St Michael’s and St Dominic’s, were replaced. The new St Michael’s (1960–4), the larger parish church, took its inspiration from Italy, with its basilica plan and slender multi-stage bell-tower given Romanesque openings … Read more