Nick Maxwell By Joseph E.A. Connell Constance Gore-Booth was born in 1868 to one of the largest landowning families in County Sligo, part of the Anglo-Irish gentry, whose control of the bulk of Irish land was a source of long-standing resentment to the Catholic Irish majority. At eighteen she became a débutante and enjoyed several ‘seasons’ in … Read more
January 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Irish nationalist ballad The Foggy Dew. But who wrote it? By Eugene Dunphy Over the years a number of published works have attributed authorship of The Foggy Dew to a range of people. In 2004 the writer’s name was cited as ‘anonymous’. In 2005 his name was … Read more
An unpublished record of what was, to all intents and purposes, Ireland’s first diplomatic mission. By John Gibney The Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) project publishes selected documents from a range of archives ‘which are considered important or useful for an understanding of Irish foreign policy’. The vast majority of these … Read more
By Lar Joye Since Greek and Roman times armies have displayed captured weapons and flags as a way of celebrating their success. In Ireland we see examples of this in the form of captured Russian cannons on display outside courthouses in Ennis and Tralee. After the Crimean War (1853–6) 21 captured cannons were gifted to … Read more
Norwegian Ole Mørk Sandvik’s 1927 visit to Ireland. By David Toms Ole Mørk Sandvik was unimpressed by Dublin on his arrival in Ireland’s capital in the summer of 1927, describing it as an ‘English city’, and boring for all that. He was equally nonplussed by Cork, which he felt shared much of the same character … Read more