Nick Maxwell Sir, —Like Ian Chapple (‘Gaelic gripes’, Letters, HI 15.6, Nov./Dec.2007), ‘usually I read your magazine from cover to cover withenthusiasm and interest’. I fell on your excellent issue on Imeacht nanIarlaí/Flight of the Earls with extra interest. Although I was broughtup as ‘a monoglot Anglophone’, as Ian Chapple describes himself, unlikehim I did not find … Read more
Sir,—Your March/April issue was a blockbuster! My favourite was the first article, about how the Romans in England saw Ireland. I had long wanted to know how close we were to becoming part of their empire. Now I know that they seriously considered invading us, but backed off because they could make more money by … Read more
Sir, —I enjoy your magazine very much. It’s always full of good readingand interesting articles. However, it can also be infuriating (notnecessarily a bad thing from an editorial point of view). I’d like topoint out a few irritants from the two most recent issues. What are extremely lengthy—four pages in all—reviews of Long Day’sJourney into … Read more
Sir,—The presence of ethnic minorities in eighteenth-century Ireland was seldom commented on, but they existed even in ‘less predictable locations … such as … Carrickmacross’, as Philip McEvansoneya pointed out (HI 20.2, March/April 2012, pp 26–8). The Carrickmacross individual steps out of the shadows a little, for she is mentioned in Denis Carolan Rushe’s History … Read more
Sir, —Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, in her account of the trials of sportswomen in mid-twentieth-century Ireland (‘Internal tamponage, hockey parturition and mixed athletics’, HI 15.6, Nov./Dec. 2007), ridicules the opinions of the late John Charles McQuaid, Catholic archbishop of Dublin, and of Dr Stafford Johnson on the subject of menstrual tampons. Dr McQuaid in particular seems … Read more