Nick Maxwell Modern postal services date back to 1840, when the first ‘penny post’ was introduced in Ireland and Britain by (Sir) Rowland Hill, the British tax and social reformer; until then, letters were charged on a sliding system based on distance to be carried. Cheap pre-paid postage at a uniform rate, and speedy delivery through the … Read more
Michael Morris was born in London on 30 July 1914, the son of the Honourable George Morris and Dora Wesley Hall. His father was one of the fourteen families making up the Tribes of Galway, but he was killed in action very shortly after Michael’s birth, on 1 September 1914 near Villers-Cotterêts, France, while commanding … Read more
Kilmainham Gaol, now long established as a national monument, is a unique resource in the study of Irish history. Every year many thousands of visitors make their way there, most often as a result of the effusive recommendation of inhabitants of the capital city, to absorb something of Irish social, penal and political history in … Read more
Referring to events in and around Trinity College early on the Tuesday of Easter 1916, in a letter to William Hugh Blake conserved in the archives of Trinity College and dated 10 May 1916, Gerard Fitzgibbon writes: ‘One thing that terrified [us] was early on Tuesday morning, just after dawn. Three of their dispatch riders … Read more
One hundred years ago, on the night of Saturday 13 August 1910, three passengers travelling from New York disembarked from the White Star Line’s steamer Baltic at what was then called Queenstown, now Cobh, with a device that was revolutionising how people viewed the world: the cinematograph or cine-camera. This device had existed for fifteen … Read more