Nick Maxwell By Fiona Brennan Micheál Mac Liammóir, the co-founder of the Gate Theatre, was a steadfast advocate of the Irish amateur dramatic movement. Writing in Theatre of Ireland in 1950, he declared that amateur drama should not be ‘overlooked in the dramatic history [of Ireland]’ because it enabled those ‘players or public, isolated from life of … Read more
Museum of Literature Ireland, www.moli.ie By Donal Fallon This year marks the centenary of the birth not only of Brendan Behan but also of his contemporary and friend Anthony Cronin. In one of the most celebrated memoirs of twentieth-century Ireland, Dead as doornails, Cronin painted a vivid and often tragic picture of bohemian Dublin in … Read more
RTÉ1, 9 and 16 February 2023 By Sylvie Kleinman This deliberately unpretentious, occasionally rollicking yet robust and informative two-part documentary looks at the career and character of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852–1932), a leading figure in the Irish literary revival. A folklorist and Irish linguist who nurtured the talent of defining writers of the age—most notably … Read more
By Patricia Fallon ‘All to one side like Moynalty’ is a well-known phrase in Meath, referring to the village of Moynalty, redeveloped in the early nineteenth century, under the ownership of John Farrell, as an estate village. The result was a village with a row of buildings on one side, book-ended by newly built churches. … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons Between the 1860s and the 1930s, over 100,000 child and juvenile emigrants were sent from the UK to Canada, Australia and New Zealand as part of the ‘Home Child Scheme’. Most Home Children were aged from seven to fourteen, although we find much younger children from two years upwards as well as … Read more