Beyond the Liffey and the Somme: Irish soldiers at the Tigris River, 1916

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

Mutiny

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

Kindred Lines

WO 35: army in Ireland, administrative and Easter Rising By Fiona Fitzsimons These are the records of the British Army in Ireland (1775 to 1923). In 1922 the British military authorities gathered these records from Dublin Castle, the Royal Military Infirmary, the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, and from army barracks across Ireland to send to England. … Read more

Broken soldiers: the chaos of enlistment in the British Army in the early months of the Great War

‘THOUSANDS OF MEN WERE PASSED FIT WITHOUT ANY MEDICAL EXAMINATION WORTH THE NAME’ By Michael Robinson In spite of the huge increase of research on—and popular interest in—the First World War in recent years, a continuing omission has been those Irishmen who were able to enlist in the British Army, and experience active service, who … Read more

William Murphy and Orangeism in mid-Victorian England

THE PHENOMENON OF ANTI-PAPAL PUBLIC ORATION IN BRITAIN By Daniel Downer Popular among the conservative middle and working classes alike as a form of intellectual education or mere entertainment, the phenomenon of anti-papal public oration in Britain grew from the 1840s onwards, coinciding with mass public concern at the revival of the Catholic Church in … Read more