Nick Maxwell Ireland and Romania lie at opposite corners of Europe. An obvious link is that both countries have well-developed rural cultures and have only relatively recently escaped the embrace of adjacent domineering empires. Another is that for just over a century they have shared the sinister figure of Count Dracula. Dracula, the 1897 novel by Dublin-born … Read more
Arrested development: Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1917–2008 Niall Meehan teases out some of the contradictions of a man who wrote, made and was the product of history. In October 1906 The Times of London noted ‘disgraceful scenes’ at the Royal University of Ireland. The chancellor was interrupted with cries of ‘Sinn Féin’ and ‘God Save Ireland’. … Read more
The proximity to London in 1948 encouraged several Irish federations, including basketball, to sample the Olympic menu for the first time. In 1945 the Amateur Basketball Association of Ireland (ABAI) was founded with the intention of introducing the game to the civilian population. Prior to this it was confined to the army. The version of … Read more
Students of the early modern period may be presented with a relatively straightforward history of Ireland’s sovereignty: the rapid military domination of a politically fragmented Gaelic polity by subjects of the king of England—beginning two decades or so after the pope’s grant of the island, by right of the so-called Donation of Constantine, to King … Read more
The 535ft-long, 15,000-ton Blue Star Line luxury liner was built in 1927 by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead. She was one of the best-known cruise liners of the 1930s, taking 354 first-class passengers in palatial style to destinations in the Mediterranean, the West Indies, the fjords of Norway and the Arctic Ocean. With her white hull … Read more