Nick Maxwell Is nothing sacred? Apparantly the Blarney Stone kissed at considerable risk to life and limb by over 300,000 visitors every year is not the stone. Most of the legends refer to a stone ‘high up in the tower’, a reference to a date-stone that was once visible on the north-east angle of Blarney Castle, with … Read more
Sir,—Do most academic historians of revolutionary and post-revolutionary Ireland conform to a ‘constitutional narrative’, driven by a moral imperative to subvert republican interpretations of Irish history? Has their shared political agenda led to widespread and deliberate distortion, suppression, ‘elision’ and even falsification of the evidential record? Have they repeatedly abused their academic positions by indulging … Read more
‘The GAA is really our stamp, it’s the rural man’s stamp. It says who he is, what you stand for, where your spirit comes from, ’tis your freedom, you know.’ These are the words of Micheál Mac an tSaoir, a Limerick hurling fan, who has told his story to the GAA Oral History Project. It … Read more
Strangers to citizens: the Irish in Europe 1600–1800 National Library of Ireland 2–3 Kildare Street Dublin 2 www.nli.ie Mon.–Wed. 9.30am–8.30pm Thur.–Fri. 9.30am–4.30pm Sun. 9.30am–12.30pm by Tony Canavan This new exhibition staged by the National Library of Ireland is situated in the former Genealogical and Heraldic Museum (and I wonder what happened to that?) a few … Read more
Derrynane House, Co. Kerry, once known as Derrynane Abbey, was the ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell, one of the most celebrated figures in modern Irish history. From his infancy to his death in Genoa in 1847, Daniel and his family spent most of their summers at Derrynane. Described as the ‘Mecca of the lovers of … Read more