Nick Maxwell By Dermot McGuinne It is important to remind ourselves that for a period during the 1930s there was an exponent of the craft of fine printing operating in Dublin, producing work to a standard that compared favourably with the highest international practice of the time. BACKGROUND The son of John O’Loughlin of Kilkenny and … Read more
Discoveries surrounding the history of St Joseph’s Industrial School, Ballinasloe, and hopes for a new oral history project. By Abbie McGowan Ballinasloe Library occupies the former Sisters of Mercy Convent and St Joseph’s Reformatory and Industrial School. The library is a modern space, but hints of the building’s past are glimpsed in the conspicuous fireplace … Read more
By Daniel Mulhall If you visit Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent home at Monticello near Charlottesville in Virginia and view his grave, its inscription may puzzle: Here was buriedThomas JeffersonAuthor of theDeclarationOfAmerican Independenceof theStatute of VirginiaForReligious Freedomand father of theUniversity of Virginia It makes no mention of the fact that he was the third president of the … Read more
By Fergus Whelan Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, in 1737. He had worked as a staymaker and a customs officer before emigrating to the North American colonies in 1774, where he quickly found work as a journalist. He achieved international fame in January 1776 when he wrote Common sense, an influential pamphlet that … Read more
By Victoria Anne Pearson In January 1776, during the American War of Independence, Cork-born Stephen Moylan, muster-master general to George Washington’s forces, wrote to his friend Colonel Joseph Reed that he ‘should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain’ to seek European aid for their … Read more