Nick Maxwell ‘IS IT STILL HELD THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT MAKING IT A PARTY DEMONSTRATION?’—RICHARD MULCAHY, EASTER 1935 By Allison Martin Over the years, Easter Rising commemorations have taken on many different guises and have been used to further different agendas, depending on contemporary circumstances. The 1920s and the restoration of the GPO In common with … Read more
Francis Vane was born in 1861 at 10 North Great George’s Street, the only son of an English cavalry officer and an Irish-American mother, and raised in Sidmouth, Devon. He was commissioned into the British army in 1878, and from 1900 served in the Boer War as a column commander and a military judge. His … Read more
ONE OF THE FEW BRITISH OFFICERS TO DISTINGUISH HIMSELF ON AND OFF THE BATTLEFIELD IN IRELAND IN 1916 By James Quinn The events of Easter Week 1916 saw heroism in many different forms. Not least was the moral heroism shown by a Dublin-born British army officer, Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher Vane, whose dogged attempts to … Read more
MESOPOTAMIA WAS AMONGST THE HARSHEST THEATRES OF THE GREAT WAR By Mark Phelan While the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme understandably dominate the current commemorative landscape, the experiences of Irishmen under arms elsewhere in 1916 remain largely unknown. Far from the street fighting in Dublin and the killing fields of France, the … Read more
However acceptable punitive raids may have been in the Middle East, analogous actions in post-war Ireland did not impress some Connaught Ranger veterans of the Mesopotamia campaign. Impelled by the British counter-insurgency campaign in Ireland, elements of the 1st Connaught Rangers mutinied in June 1920. The rebels struck the Union flag at their outpost on … Read more