Nick Maxwell The British Olympic Association (BOA) was founded in 1906 and some of its key members rose to prominence in the International Olympic Committee (IOC), helped by their hosting of the 1908 Olympics in London. The BOA was heavily Tory in its political make-up, and correspondence between its secretary and Baron de Coubertin of the IOC … Read more
On 17 April 1920, a coroner’s jury investigating the shooting of Cork lord mayor (and IRA brigade commander) Tomás MacCurtain issued its famous finding of ‘wilful murder’ against Prime Minister David Lloyd George and top civil and police officials in Ireland. The verdict provoked a predictable response from, amongst others, the Irish Times, which mocked … Read more
John A. McCullen’s Illustrated history of the Phoenix Park does exactly what it says on the tin. A detailed description and time-line of the landscape management and design of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, it is published in a lavish large-format volume, and gorgeously illustrated with over 240 maps, plans and full-page colour prints. McCullen is chief … Read more
In 1771 a ‘Signor Pastorini’ (actually the English bishop Charles Walmesley) asked: ‘How long, O Lord, do you defer judging our cause, you who are holy and must detest the cruelties exercised upon us; you, who are true and have told us, you will revenge the injuries done to your servants?’ He also declared that … Read more
The past twenty years or so have witnessed an upsurge in the academic study of Tudor Ireland. A number of young scholars were inspired by a series of important essays dealing with the Irish reformation by Brendan Bradshaw, Nicholas Canny and Karl Bottigheimer in the 1970s and 1980s and influenced by diocesan studies undertaken by … Read more