Nick Maxwell Richard Crosbie organised three manned balloon flights in Dublin in 1785, and made a final flight from Limerick in 1786. He is rightly celebrated as Ireland’s first aeronaut, and today there is a memorial to him in Ranelagh Gardens, where his first flight took place. Crosbie was born near Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, c. 1756, descended … Read more
A ‘manly study’? Irish women historians, 1868–1949 Nadia Clare Smith (Palgrave/Macmillan, £45) ISBN 9780230009042 In this timely monograph, Nadia Clare Smith has made a significant contribution to Irish women’s history and Irish historiography. Her careful analysis of the careers of twenty women historians not only challenges W. E. Gladstone’s definition of history as a ‘manly … Read more
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