Nick Maxwell Sir,—Are euphemisms helpful in the writing of history? I don’t think so. I’m referring to ‘“No Worse and No Better”’: Irish Women and Backstreet Abortions’, by Clíona Rattigan, about illegal abortions in Ireland and Northern Ireland from the 1920s to the 1940s (HI 21.1, Jan./Feb. 2013). The article makes more than one reference to women … Read more
There is, indeed, a necessity to tell the history of the Irish revolution ‘as it was’. Sadly, in his call for this, Desmond Fennell sets guidelines for a narrative that does no more than rationalise the version of the revolution’s history that was accepted for decades after the Civil War, only to dissipate on deeper … Read more
March 3 1998 Two friends, one a Catholic and the other a Protestant, were shot dead when LVF gunmen opened fire in the Railway Bar, Poyntzpass, Co. Armagh. 5 1953 Josef Stalin (74), Soviet dictator, died. 8 1973 The IRA mounted its first large bomb attack on central London at the Old Bailey. Two bombs … Read more
Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts and Culture, has come up with a terrific way to commemorate 1916. He’s going to refurbish the National Gallery. He is to spend €20 million of taxpayers’ money giving the gallery a make-over in time for 2016. Clearly he knows something about the National Gallery’s role in the Easter Rising, … Read more
Hugh O’Flaherty was actually born in Cork in 1898 (his father was in the RIC) but he grew up in Killarney, where his parents had settled down. A noted athlete in his youth, he trained as a missionary priest and embarked on a globe-trotting career that saw him serve the Vatican in a range of … Read more