Nick Maxwell By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls In the spring of 1945, as the Nazi high command began to accept that the game was up, they prepared to use one last bargaining chip that they hoped might help to save their own skins. They gathered together a collection of high-value hostages whom they had been holding in various … Read more
County Wexford www.thenormanway.com By Tony Canavan The Norman Way is a heritage trail that runs along the south coast of County Wexford. Although celebrating an episode from medieval history, the Way is very much 21st-century, as it is promoted mainly through its website and social media. There are information panels and maps along the route … Read more
Produced by Patricia Baker Newstalk 106–108FM, 3 February 2019 By John Gibney Harry Clarke’s haunting image The last hour of the night serves as the frontispiece for Patrick Abercrombie’s Dublin of the future (1922), one of numerous grandiose plans for the reconstruction of Ireland’s capital city over the centuries. Devised prior to the First World … Read more
For many separatists, not only had Ireland lost its independence with Strongbow’s arrival but the other evils of foreign rule could also be traced to that era. By Brian Hanley Strongbow has cast a long shadow over Irish history. When Irish republicans demanded independence a century ago they believed that they were undoing a process … Read more
Two competing visions of Ireland are played out in their works, but each, in his own way, transformed the study of medieval Ireland. By Ruairí Cullen The dawn of ‘scientific’ history writing in the nineteenth century produced little original work on the Anglo-Normans in Ireland. Historians had not been kind to Strongbow and his companions, … Read more