Nick Maxwell BY AODHÁN CREALEY JULY 22/1950 Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock (57), the film director known as Rex Ingram, died in California. Born in Rathmines, the son of a clergyman, Ingram emigrated at the age of eighteen and studied sculpture in New York. Subsequently he joined the Edison Film Studios, where he acted, wrote scripts and, in … Read more
Our front cover features a painting of the Lancaster bomber—VN-Z ME798—crewed by Irish airman Sergeant P.B. McRann, the subject of a piece of family history detective work by Desmond Gibney on pp 44–6. For male readers of a certain age the image will surely conjure up nostalgic memories, particularly olfactory ones, of Airfix model-making. But … Read more
By Pat Dargan During the Second World War the Irish government adopted a policy of neutrality, legislated for through the Emergency Powers Act 1939, which gave rise to the term ‘the Emergency’ to describe the period of the war as it affected Ireland. The Irish Army at the time was grossly under strength, and a … Read more
By Tarlach de Blácam Aodh de Blácam (Harold Saunders Blackham), journalist, essayist, poet and novelist, was born in London to a Newry-born apothecary, William George Blackham, and his English wife, Elizabeth Evison Saunders. According to Aodh’s uncle, Major-General Robert James Blackham, he ‘was a member of a family which claims descent from Sir Charles Blackham, … Read more
By Brian Trench In early 1925 a public analysis laboratory opened in Dawson Street, Dublin, in the premises to which the New Ireland Assurance Company had recently moved. The team of six scientists were all women, led by Phyllis Ryan, the first woman to become a public analyst in Ireland. She had been providing chemical … Read more