Nick Maxwell RTÉ1, 28 September, 5 and 12 October 2016 By John Gibney John Connors: The Travellers begins with the eponymous presenter recounting a range of pejorative terms that might be used against Travellers before pointing out that all of them have equally been used in the past against the Irish as a whole. It is an … Read more
National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square W, Dublin 2 www.nationalgallery.ie Brendan Rooney, Creating History: stories of Ireland in art (Irish Academic Press, €22.50 hb, ISBN 9781911024286) By Tony Canavan As part of the 1916 centenary commemorations, the National Gallery of Ireland has put together 50 paintings exploring Irish history from the arrival of St Patrick … Read more
AFTER THE FORMATION LAST YEAR OF A GOVERNMENT INCORPORATING INDEPENDENT MINISTERS AND RELIANT ON INDEPENDENT TDS TO AN UNPRECEDENTED EXTENT, IT MAY BE OF INTEREST TO LOOK BACK ON A CELEBRATED INDEPENDENT COUNCILLOR AND TD WHO DECIDED THE FATE OF A GOVERNMENT By Patrick Maume Seán D. Dublin Bay Loftus will be remembered, especially by … Read more
IN 1968 FUTURE RED HAND COMMANDO FRANKIE CURRY, A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD NEPHEW OF IMPRISONED UVF FIGUREHEAD GUSTY SPENCE, WOULD INADVERTENTLY CAUSE THE BIRTH OF A LOYALIST YOUTH SUBCULTURE THAT WOULD GREATLY INFLUENCE EVENTS DURING THE VIOLENT EARLY 1970S IN BELFAST. By Gareth Mulvenna Frankie Curry and some of his Rangers-supporting friends were in a Shankill street … Read more
DOCUMENTS OUTLINING OFFICIAL PLANNING FOR THE STATE’S TRANSITION TO WORLD WAR III By Michael Kennedy The impact of a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb on Dublin would be cataclysmic. A 1958 Department of Defence map showed concentric circles of devastation moving out from a notional city centre ‘ground burst’. South to Dundrum, west to the Phoenix Park … Read more