Nick Maxwell The first step towards organising international athletics for women was taken in May 1921, when some 300 athletes from Italy, Norway, Switzerland, England and France competed at the Olympiades Feminines held in the glamorous surroundings of Monte Carlo. Mary Lines, a 27-year-old Lyon’s Corner House waitress, proved the star of the games and, with rapturous … Read more
Whatever one’s point of view, Patrick Pearse has always engendered strong emotions. Shortly after the Easter Rising he became widely revered, some even suggesting that he should be made a saint. In the decades surrounding the outbreak of the troubles in Northern Ireland, however, he was frequently described as a ‘fascist’. In 1978 Xavier Carty made a … Read more
The post-medieval archaeology of Ireland, 1550–1850 Audrey Horning, Ruairí Ó Baoill, Colm Donnelly and Paul Logue (eds) (Wordwell, for the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group, €70) ISBN 9781905569137 This welcome collection serves several purposes and prompts even more questions. First, it surveys comprehensively what post-medieval archaeologists have achieved, mainly during the last 30 years. It also … Read more
Readers who profited from Micheál Ó Siochrú’s article on Oliver Cromwell in the Sept./Oct. 2008 issue or from the book from which it is drawn—God’s executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the conquest of Ireland (Faber), also published last year—will be interested to know that his 1999 Confederate Ireland 1642–1649: a constitutional and political analysis has been … Read more
The infamous Mrs Mack, who appears in the ‘Nighttown’ episode of Ulysses, kept a brothel at 85 Lower Tyrone Street in the heart of the red-light (Monto) district of Dublin. She was so well known that the area was often referred to as ‘Macktown’. The 1901 census records that Mack had five ‘lodgers’, ranging in … Read more