Nick Maxwell Most Irish Olympians up to 1924 were either representatives of adopted homelands, like the USA or the Commonwealth dominions (in 1912 Kennedy McArthur from County Antrim became the only Irish-born winner of the men’s marathon, representing South Africa), or home-based competitors classed in official records as part of the Great Britain team, or sometimes ‘Great … Read more
Politics, religion and the press: Irish journalism in mid-Victorian England Anthony McNicholas (Peter Lang AG, €68.40) ISBN 9783039106998This study focuses on newspapers produced predominantly by Irish people, and predominantly for Irish people, in 1860s London. It thus explores largely virgin territory. Little systematic research has been done on the history of Irish journalism in Ireland … Read more
Oliver Cromwell’s government sponsored two congregations of Protestant Dissenters in Dublin between 1649 and 1660. One of them met at Wood Street and the other at ‘Saint Nicholas-within-the-walls’, close to Christ Church Cathedral. Both of these communities flourished from the mid-seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth. For more than 140 years the ministers at … Read more
Memoirs of Captain Rock Thomas Moore (edited and introduced by Emer Nolan, with annotations by Seamus Deane) (Field Day, €25.) ISBN 9781844881437 Bard of Erin: the life of Thomas Moore Ronan Kelly (Penguin Ireland, €32.) ISBN 978946755363 Famous as the writer of melancholic ‘Irish melodies’ such as ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and ‘The Meeting … Read more
Cork experienced its first recorded encounter with the Vikings in 820, when its great monastery was attacked. Yet the annals record only three further raids on Cork by Vikings from overseas in the following three and a half centuries. The first record we have of a Viking settlement at Cork dates from 846, when Irish annals report that Ólchobhar … Read more