Nick Maxwell By Felix Larkin Dublin Opinion, the self-styled ‘national humorous journal of Ireland’, was published monthly between 1922 and 1968. It was a miscellany of quips, short articles, poems and cartoons—all in a humorous vein, but with serious intent. The journal, without sacrificing its humour, always had the capacity to convey a serious message—and the message … Read more
By Cormac Moore One hundred years ago, on 6 November 1924, the Irish Boundary Commission convened for the first time. It consisted of three commissioners: Eoin MacNeill, appointed by the Irish Free State government; Joseph R. Fisher, appointed as the Northern Ireland representative by the British government (the Northern Ireland government had refused to recognise … Read more
By Cora Crampton Up to the end of the sixteenth century the Gaelic polity relied heavily on intermarriage as a crucial means of consolidating political and military power bases. To this end, high-status Gaelic women functioned as political resources under the control of their male relatives. It is proposed to examine available traces of the … Read more
By Jesse Harrington In two parliamentary questions in June 2024, Clare TD Cathal Crowe called for a government task force to locate and recover the alleged crown of Brian Bóruma (Brian Boru), the Irish king mortally wounded at Clontarf in 1014. Crowe suggested that, if this crown existed, it might be found somewhere in the … Read more
By Damien McLellan In the second episode of the recent RTÉ TV documentary Invasion: The Normans (reviewed in HI 32.5, Sept./Oct. 2024), the romantic and anachronistic 1864 illustration by James Doyle (below) was shown to represent Henry II’s arrival in Waterford. Henry is depicted as having presumably stepped up from his ship, which is lying … Read more