Nick Maxwell By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls We have mentioned here before the new literary genre of ‘biography of a year’. Now the Royal Irish Academy has got in on the act with the splendid Ireland 1922: independence, partition, civil war. And the good news for the casual reader is that, despite the book’s subtitle, there’s far more … Read more
National Photographic Archive, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar https://www.nli.ie/en/national-photographic-archive.aspx By Tony Canavan Ireland on the Box, celebrating six decades of television in Ireland, is a collaboration between RTÉ and the National Library of Ireland. It is a historical exhibition insofar as it recounts the history of a national institution and reflects many aspects of Irish … Read more
Ned Kelly Pictures TG4, 22 Sept. 2021, 8 Jan. 2022 By Donal Fallon In March of last year it was reported that Dublin City Council’s Commemorations Committee had agreed to the placing of a plaque on 12 Merrion Square, former home of Violet Gibson. The reported description of Gibson as a ‘committed anti-fascist’ undoubtedly raised … Read more
By Fiona Brennan The reappraisal of women’s participation in, and contribution to, the revolutionary period is one of the more enduring legacies of the ‘decade of centenaries’ commemorative programme. In the case of Máirín Cregan, Cumann na mBan activist, it has resulted in a reassessment of her literary career and her work as a dramatist. … Read more
Newstalk, 3 & 9 October, 28 December 2021 By Fionnuala Walsh In October 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, word trickled out that the historian Margaret MacCurtain had passed away. Over social media and in Zoom meetings, history scholars and friends gathered to lament her passing and reflect on her inspiration. The immediate fulsome … Read more