Nick Maxwell Sir, —I would like to compliment Matthew Kelly for his excellent article‘. . . and William Rooney spoke in Irish’ in the Jan./Feb. 2007 issue.Rooney is indeed an important figure who is rarely considered, and thearticle does him great justice. While Rooney’s commitment to theemerging nationalism of the late 1890s until his 1901 death wasrelatively … Read more
A chara, —Geraldine Plunkett Dillon’s memoir All in the blood, edited byHonor Ó Brolcháin and reviewed by Eoin Dillon in the Jan./Feb. 2007issue, is an important work. The book and subsequent publicityemphasised the republican aspects, but the Plunketts were not allradical nationalists. The family had divided loyalties, as detailed inmy Wigs and guns, Irish barristers … Read more
On 26 July 1914 the Asgard, the yacht of Erskine Childers, then a famous writer, sailed into Howth with 900 Mauser rifles, which were quickly unloaded and distributed to waiting Volunteers and boys of Fianna Éireann. This followed the very successful landing in April by the Ulster Volunteer Force of 35,000 German, Italian and Austrian … Read more
F.S.L. Lyons argued in Ireland since the Famine (1971) that wartime neutrality led to Ireland’s ‘almost total isolation from the rest of mankind’. Philosophically, his ‘Plato’s cave’ metaphor captured a belief in Ireland’s moral failure by refusing to join a just war against Nazi Germany. Ireland, Lyons felt, instead looked inwards, absorbed by its own … Read more
Sir, —I read with great interest the article by Alice McDermott and Mark Power on the 10th (Irish) Division in Salonica in 1915–17 (HI 14.6, Nov./Dec. 2006), and it is good to see recognition of Irish participation on this forgotten front of World War I. However, I do take issue with their assertion of an … Read more