Nick Maxwell The Irish War of Independence was a war of many firsts: it was the first time that government forces used large numbers of motor vehicles against insurgents; in turn, it was the first time that insurgents conducted an ambush campaign against motor vehicles; finally, it was the first time that government forces ‘up-armoured’ (to use … Read more
The ‘quiet and insidious’ methods of political influence and control used by the Catholic clergy in Meath ‘leave life not worth living in small country towns and villages’, Navan’s town clerk, James Lawlor, complained despondently to the Irish Independent in February 1893, after the Parnellite former MP Pierce Mahony had again been defeated in a … Read more
Harry Clarke was the leading stained glass artist of his day. Mainly working on churches, most notably UCC’s Honan Chapel, he was also well known as a book illustrator. After W.T. Cosgrave, president of the Irish government, opened an exhibition in his Studios in North Frederick Street in 1925, Clarke was approached in 1926 to … Read more
ROS, Amanda McKittrick (1860–1939), was born Anna Margaret McKittrick on 8 December 1860 in Drumaness, Ballynahinch, Co. Down, fourth child of Edward Amlave McKittrick, head teacher at Drumaness High School, and Eliza McKittrick (née Black). She followed her father into teaching and as early as 1884 attended Marlborough Teacher Training College, Dublin. During her teaching … Read more
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fake ‘native’ villages—often African but also sometimes Far Eastern—were hugely popular attractions throughout Europe and America at great exhibitions or fairs. They typically took the form of village buildings complete with ‘villagers’ who lived on the site, and metropolitan audiences could wander around watching the ‘villagers’ go … Read more