Nick Maxwell Convert Rolls 1703–1845 and Catholic Qualification Rolls 1774–1845 By Fiona Fitzsimons The Catholic Convert and Qualification Rolls were recently released on-line. The society portrayed in these records is much more diverse than was previously supposed. It’s also more pluralist, if we compare the Convert Rolls with the surviving RC parish records on-line. The procedure for … Read more
WHAT WAS THE CONTEXT OF THE 12 JULY RIOT IN ST JOHNSTON, CO. DONEGAL, DURING WHICH 70 PEOPLE WERE INJURED AND PROTESTANT CHURCHES, BUSINESSES AND HOMES ATTACKED? By Brian Hanley July 1972 was the worst month of the bloodiest year of the Northern Ireland conflict. As violence intensified, many in the Republic feared that the … Read more
A FIRST WORLD WAR SOLDIER’S READING LIST By Laurence Fenton On 14 September 1914, James O’Donnell, an eighteen-year-old soldier from Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, was injured while digging a trench near the small French town of Verneuil during the mayhem of the Battle of the Aisne. A German shell had landed close by, shattering the leg … Read more
When It Was Dark (1903) was the ‘most original and daring novel of the century’, its publishers claimed, the grandiosity of the statement undermined by the fact that the century was only three years old at the time. Nevertheless, it certainly caused a sensation when it came out—despite (or possibly because of) the pretty clear … Read more
Although largely forgotten today, Hallie Erminie Rives was one of the most popular writers in early twentieth-century America, catapulted to literary fame by A Furnace of Earth in 1900. She was also a true American ‘blue blood’ whose family loomed large in the history of Virginia (the colony in which Hearts Courageous was primarily set), … Read more