Nick Maxwell Cricket, lovely cricket! It saved us during the Great Famine—well, some men in County Laois anyway. Newly discovered documents reveal that in the darkest days of the Great Hunger Viscount Ashbrook paid poor, starving peasants to play the game. Castle Durrow club consisted of good Protestant gentlemen, but when they needed to make up the … Read more
Packed with historical detail, El sueño del celta/The dream of the Celt takes place in a windowless cell in Pentonville Prison during the summer of 1916, as Casement reflects on his life in the weeks before his execution. Interspersed with these musings of a condemned man are chapters relating to his youth, his years in … Read more
Dom Mark Tierney, who died in Belgium on 31 December 2011, was a notable liturgist and historian. A monk of Glenstal Abbey, he was born in Dublin in 1925 and educated at CUS in Leeson Street and at University College Dublin. His maternal grandfather was Alfred Blanche, French consul-general in Dublin in the 1920s. He … Read more
The history of the sexuality of Ireland reveals the nation to be something of an oddity. No history is complete without reference to the range of demographic characteristics that set us apart. In 1966, for example, Ireland had the lowest marriage rate in Europe, yet it had the highest marital fertility rate. The percentage of … Read more