Nick Maxwell The boundary between serious and popular theatre is sometimes hard to define, especially in the case of a playwright like John B. Keane, whose work straddles the boundaries between the two. Keane’s first play, Sive, was rejected by the Abbey and was first performed in his home town in Kerry by the Listowel Drama Group … Read more
The sandstone peaks of the Skelligs loom out of the Atlantic seven miles off the coast of south-west Kerry, of which they are a geological extension—an almost ironic connection, given how utterly divorced the Skelligs now are from the human life of the mainland. The hardship of life on the neighbouring Blasket Islands was immortalised … Read more
The private notebook of Bram Stoker has been discovered in an attic on the Isle of Wight, offering clues to the origins of his most famous work, Dracula. The notebook was found by the author’s great-grandson, Noel Dobbs. He sent a facsimile of the book to Stoker’s great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker, an author himself, who has … Read more
On Friday 11 November HI editor Tommy Graham officially launched a network of four local history websites developed by communities in the west of Ireland. The websites are the result of an education and outreach initiative by the National Museum of Ireland–Country Life, whereby each of the participating groups has collected, digitally preserved and made … Read more
The contents of www.ainm.ie are based on the nine-volume series Beathaisnéis by Diarmuid Breathnach and Máire Ní Mhurchú (1986–2007). It is a valuable research tool comprising almost 1,700 biographies dating from 1560 to the present day. Each of the featured lives has made a unique contribution to the Irish language over the last five centuries. … Read more