Nick Maxwell The most dangerous man in Britain’ or a paranoid crank? ‘The greatest fighter of the Scottish working class’ or a middle-class intellectual out of touch with working-class opinion? A Marxist ‘first, last, and always’ or a Communist Party heretic? A Scottish patriot on a par with William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace or a minor footnote to history? … Read more
This year, 2007, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ernie O’Malley, and it is almost 110 years since his birth in Ellison Street, Castlebar. He spent only eight years there, where his father, Luke, an official with the Congested Districts Board, was a supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party, the typical Irish Catholic … Read more
‘There were two engines, the first drawn by four horses, on the top of which sat twelve firemen and their foreman dressed in pea-green, plush breeches and vests with gilt buttons. The men had two bugles on this engine, and on arriving at Dublin Castle Yard played ‘God Save the King’ to the delight of … Read more
In 1793–4 Anthologia Hibernica published a series of letters by ‘Mentor’ on the philosophy of nature, covering a wide range of mathematical and scientific topics. Letter eighteen in October 1794 dealt with the nature and properties of magnetism. This was followed in November by one on electricity in which ‘Mentor’ described what he called a … Read more
There have been attempts to publish the 1641 Depositions before, in the 1930s and 1960s, but these plans were abandoned thanks to the outbreaks of, respectively, World War II and the ‘Troubles’. After all, explains Professor Ohlmeyer, the Depositions were, and still are, extremely contentious. The fact that the testimonies were taken mainly from Protestant … Read more