Nick Maxwell Annie Burke’s glasses: a new lens through which to view Bloody Sunday, 1920 By Siobhán Doyle Artefacts that bear visible traces of damage caused by conflict are often employed by curators in exhibitions in order to emphasise the physicalities of violence and the distress of individuals. Many of these artefacts are everyday objects that become … Read more
In this the centenary year of the Kilmichael ambush it is perhaps timely to reflect on Peter Hart’s reinterpretation and how he arrived at his conclusions. By John Regan Twenty-two years ago, Canadian-born historian the late Peter Hart stirred up controversy with his iconoclastic reinterpretation of the famous ambush at Kilmichael. The storm followed the … Read more
One of many examples of black propaganda by the press officials in Dublin Castle? Or has it a basis in truth? By Michael B. Barry As the War of Independence intensified throughout 1920, Crown forces expanded their operations in Dublin. The new force of Auxiliaries worked together with the British Army in mounting patrols, roadblocks … Read more
Who was Tony Small, friend and manservant of Lord Edward Fitzgerald? And what became of him and his family after Fitzgerald’s death in 1798? By Laura McKenna The Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina in September 1781 was one of the last of the Revolutionary War and one of the bloodiest. Among those left … Read more
It might be expected that the Ireland in which Tony Small arrived would have had little experience of Africans or other people of colour living among them, but that was not the case—at least not in ports such as Dublin or Cork. There are many individual reports—in newspapers, church records and memoirs—of black people, usually … Read more