Nick Maxwell One of Dublin’s architectural gems is the old Department of Industry and Commerce (now Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation) building at nos 24–28 Kildare Street, formerly the site of the Maples Hotel mentioned in James Joyce’s Portrait of the artist as a young man. After independence the Department of Industry and Commerce occupied various buildings around … Read more
I saw the Protestant Reformation as centrally about civil and religious freedom—the right to read the Bible in one’s own language; to approach God directly with neither priest nor pastor; to interpret the Bible and to assess religious and other issues for oneself. The Catholic Church in contrast was a powerful, wealthy, hierarchical, worldwide institution … Read more
Virtually no Irish or even Ulster history was taught at the school I attended on Belfast’s Shankill Road. Thus when I left school at the age of fourteen I was completely unprepared for what was to come. I grew up in a devoutly evangelical Protestant home, where I was told stories of our suffering and … Read more
Today, the sole copy of the 1743 poster, poorly printed on cheap paper and about the size of a modern A3 page, survives in Marsh’s Library in Dublin. There is an unmistakable element of showmanship to the ‘curious Experiments’, and one can easily imagine Boyle Godfrey, or one of his associates, uttering the immortal lines ‘Roll … Read more
In the early 1960s I began to attend Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church, which seemed obsessed with ‘Romanism’ and Romish conspiracies. It was claimed that the Catholic Church wanted an Ireland Romanised from end to end as a springboard from which to take possession of England. The Irish state elevated the Catholic Church to a … Read more