Nick Maxwell MY FAMILY HAS A SPECIAL LINK WITH 1916: MY GREAT-GRAND UNCLE PADDY FIRED THE FIRST SHOT IN THE EASTER RISING By Adam Murphy My great-grand uncle was Patrick Joseph Ramsbottom, known to his family as ‘Paddy’ and to his comrades as an fear mór because he was over 6ft tall. He was born on 21 … Read more
By Ian Lawler Karl Goetz was a German satirical medallist based in Munich who is best known for the infamous Lusitania medal which, owing to an incorrect date for the sinking (two days prior to the actual event), was seized upon by the Allies as evidence that the torpedoing of the Lusitania was a planned … Read more
SECULAR FRANCE AND CATHOLIC FRANCE SET ASIDE THEIR DIFFERENCES AND ABLY USED RELIGION TO BENEFIT THEIR CAUSE DURING THE WAR By Oliver O’Hanlon One hundred years ago, in the middle of the First World War, a small group of French clergymen visited Ireland. News of their visit was reported in the Irish, British and French … Read more
When they returned to France, Fr Pierre Batiffol wrote an account of their trip in the Catholic daily newspaper La Croix. A longer description was recorded in a French Catholic magazine in November 1916. This was republished the following year in pamphlet form as Notre visite en Irlande. This 56-page pamphlet recounts the packed itinerary … Read more
The war had brought the French State and the French Catholic Church much closer than they had been for some time. Ever since the French Revolution of 1789, anti-clericalism had become an increasingly common feature in the country once referred to as ‘the Eldest Daughter of the Church’. This culminated in the 1905 law on … Read more