Nick Maxwell By Daragh Fitzgerald The O’Brien Press celebrated its 50th anniversary in November 2024, and to mark the occasion it released a new edition of its first publication, Éamonn MacThomáis’s classic Me jewel and darlin’ Dublin. While the book, I am sure, occupies a special place on many readers’ shelves, this edition offers much to the … Read more
MONAGHAN COUNTY MUSEUM By Donal Fallon Visiting Monaghan, I decided to leave bright and early to include Inniskeen, home place of Patrick Kavanagh. ‘All great civilizations are based on the parish’, insisted the poet, and in this parish his legacy is championed. Across the road from Daniel McNello’s public house, which includes Kavanagh in its … Read more
TG4 and BBC2 NI, 9 and 13 October 2024 By Sylvie Kleinman ‘Did you never hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?’ A character in Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (1907) had supposedly seen them in Trinity College, Dublin. … Read more
By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr Marriage was often afforded high status as a societal stabiliser in newly established states, and the Irish Free State, operative from 1922, was no exception. Unlike Northern Ireland, which adopted the parliamentary system of divorce, the Irish Free State provided no mechanism for private bills of divorce to proceed. Although … Read more
By Niamh Brennan In 1825 the Commissioners for Irish Education recommended the establishment of a national school system in Ireland. This was agreed upon and implemented by the British administration in Ireland by 1831. The British government’s main overall objective was to establish tighter control of the Irish population, and to reduce the influence of … Read more