Nick Maxwell Hunger Director: Steve McQueen by Laurence McKeown I met Steve McQueen and Enda Walsh (writer) when they were in the initial stages of writing the screenplay. The meeting took place in the offices of Coiste na nIarchimí, the republican ex-prisoners’ organisation based in Beechmount Avenue just off the Falls Road, Belfast. The street still bears … Read more
Thousands of women working as prostitutes roamed the streets of the towns and cities of Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While there was a common belief that prostitution was an inevitable feature of life, especially where military garrisons existed, as long as prostitutes remained out of the public eye they were tolerated. … Read more
‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’, was the advice given by the crusty old editor in the John Ford western The man who shot Liberty Valence. To a historian it may seem that this is the guiding principle behind the celebrations of the Titanic, history’s most successful disaster. The outline of its story … Read more
In recent months, coordinated public statements concerning Ireland’s looming decade of commemoration, uttered by Taoiseach Brian Cowen and British Prime Minister David Cameron, have referred to the need to acknowledge a ‘shared history’. After a century of conflict and compromise the ‘temporary’ solution of partition has become a fixture, and with it contradictory and oppositional … Read more