Nick Maxwell Blinder Films TG4, 17 and 24 September and 1 October BBC1, 17 September RTÉ1, 18 September By John Gibney What is mental illness? To ask that question implies the existence of mental health, an intriguing definition of which was provided by Jim Lucey early in the first episode of Ar intinn eile: ‘the successful integration … Read more
One of the main social functions of picture postcards was to facilitate communication, a sort of Edwardian Facebook or Twitter. We tend to think of postcards now as mainly sent by holidaymakers, but in the early twentieth century they were also used to send birthday, congratulatory, Christmas and other greetings. The importance of postcards as … Read more
Between 1895 and 1920 the purchasing, sending and collecting of picture postcards became a craze, in Ireland as elsewhere. About 200–300 billion of them are thought to have circulated worldwide during this period, and postcard production became a big international business that appealed to entrepreneurs everywhere, employing huge numbers of people. The first plain postcard … Read more
Gaiety Theatre, Verdant Productions, 11 Sept.–25 Oct. 2014 By Donal Fallon In June 1959 the Irish Times noted that, with the success of The Hostage and his book Borstal Boy, the name of Brendan Behan ‘has become almost as well-known through theatrically-minded Europe as those of Shaw and Wilde’. Certainly, the Dubliner captivated crowds, both … Read more
Christina Jessop was born in Dublin in 1878 and lived there until 1908, when she married Jack Wilson and moved with him to Cobh (then Queenstown), Co. Cork. From 1903 to 1908 she collected c. 300 picture postcards sent to her by relatives, friends and acquaintances from places as varied as London, Paris, Alaska, Switzerland … Read more