Nick Maxwell By Fiona Fitzsimons This collection, the earliest run of travel documents, survives in the Augmentation Office papers in the Exchequer records of the UK National Archives. The Office derived from the Court of Augmentation, a financial court; the safe conduct of travellers was guaranteed by the Crown, for which it was also a useful source … Read more
Wed 7pm National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street. W.B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde: an artistic relationship, Noreen Doody.
Friendly societies played a vital role in mitigating the worst material consequences of illness and hardship. By Joe Fodey The Irish National Foresters (INF) was probably the most famous and influential of the many friendly societies operating in Ireland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In its heyday it had branches throughout Ireland and … Read more
From superstition to Streptomyces. By Eugene Dunphy On the morning of Sunday 2 January 1842, two unnamed young men set out on a mission. A relative of one suffered from tuberculosis (TB) and had subsequently contracted scrofula, a side-effect of TB that caused disfiguring abcesses in the neck of the unfortunate sufferer. Hoping to find … Read more
There are certain parallels between the present Brexit crisis and our ongoing ‘decade of commemorations’. Just as now, a factor in the Home Rule crisis of 1912–14 was the parliamentary arithmetic in Westminster, where Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power. That only lasted until 1915, of course, when Unionists (both British and … Read more