Nick Maxwell By Aodhán Crealey MARCH 03/1978 Emmet Dalton (80), soldier and film producer, died. Dalton served with the British Army during the First World War and upon demobilisation in April 1919 joined the IRA and IRB. Described as bearing all the hallmarks of a British officer, including a cultured accent and a toothbrush moustache, he became … Read more
By John Dorney Brendan O’Regan is an under-recognised figure in twentieth-century Irish economic history. He helped to pioneer the strategy of attracting foreign industry, which remains the most important element in the Republic’s economic strategy today. At Shannon he founded a ‘free industrial zone’ beside the airport where companies could be free for a specified … Read more
By Brenda Moore-McCann Years after his death in Genoa, Italy, in 1847, the heart of Daniel O’Connell (b. 1775), the internationally renowned politician of Catholic Emancipation, lawyer and former lord mayor of Dublin, went missing in Rome. The heart of ‘the Liberator’ has not been seen since. It is a story that brings us from … Read more
Genocide is a concept that has been applied from time to time to Irish history, most notably to the Great Hunger (An Gorta Mór) of the 1840s. In general, academic historians have shied away from such a discourse, arguing that it is anachronistic. The word wasn’t coined until 1944 by Raphael Lemkin in relation to … Read more
Recorded on the 1 Feb 2024, at the National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street. Join History Ireland editor, Tommy Graham, to mark the 1500th anniversary of the passing of St Brigit, Ireland’s most notable female saint. But who was she?—a figure of history or of myth and legend?—a goddess and/or a feminist icon? With Edel Breathnach, Elva Johnston, Bairbre Ní Fhloinn and Niamh Wycherley.This … Read more