Nick Maxwell Across 1 North Italian monastery founded by Columbanus in AD 614 (6). 5 English hospital notorious for the ill-treatment meted out to the mentally ill in the eighteenth century (6). 10 This bay was the location of the Sea Horse tragedy in 1816 (7). 11 Site of modernised Norman castle in County Meath associated with … Read more
The most illuminating evidence that we have of high-level military decision-making in relation to Bloody Sunday is contained in a series of interviews conducted in 1983 and 1984 by Desmond Hamill for a book that he was writing about the British Army in Northern Ireland. Hamill’s interviews with the key military figures involved were conducted … Read more
Sir, —I have a little footnote to add to your article on the Eucharistic Congress (HI 15.6, Nov./Dec. 2007). At the time, the country was in severe financial trouble and could not afford new tack for the Blue Hussars. My father, a tailor by trade, was commissioned to make many of the blue saddle-covers for … Read more
In a debate in the late eighteenth century in the Irish House of Commons on the vote of a grant, which was recommended by the chancellor of the exchequer as one not likely to be felt burdensome for many years to come, opponents argued that the House had no right to load posterity with a … Read more
Sir, —The errors in Tony Canavan’s piece on the vandalised painting at Stormont (‘A papist painting for a Protestant parliament?’, HI 16.1, Jan./Feb. 2008) lead me to wonder whether he really researched the topic or rather acquired his information at second or third hand. The man who attacked the painting was Charles Forrester, not ‘Forster’. … Read more