Nick Maxwell The official denunciation of former Lord Deputy Perrot refers to his proposals to poison the Wicklow warlord Feagh McHugh O’Byrne. This, however, was a show trial, steeped in lies and propaganda. The assassination of troublesome Irish leaders made sound sense to English administrators in Ireland, not least because it was cheaper than waging expensive and … Read more
Sir, —I was delighted to see that you featured Altirí na hAiséirighe in your September/October 2009 issue. It brought back boyhood memories of going with my pals to attend their meetings in the city centre. There was something flamboyant about that organisation that made it more attractive to us than the staid images of … Read more
I found Tom Landers’s letter (Democracy?) in the last issue (HI 17.6,Nov./Dec. 2009) silly and puzzling. What connection had Hitler with theShannon scheme, which was started before he was even heard of andcompleted nearly four years before he came to power? While Siemens hadthe contract, it was Irish-financed and built by Irishmen. My father, aUCC … Read more
Sir, —I wish to point out that R. M. Douglas has his facts a bit mixedup in his article ‘Ailtirí na hAiséirighe: Ireland’s fascist New Order’(HI 17.5, Sept./Oct. 2009), where he states that Michael Donnellan,leader of Clann na Talmhan, boasted of the similarities between hispolitical mission and that of Adolf Hitler. In the research for … Read more
Sir —Myles Dungan’s article on Captain O’Shea and the Fenians contains interesting information about politics in Clare, but he is surely misinterpreting the situation in speaking of a ‘sustained and practical nature of the [Fenian] alliance with O’Shea’ (p. 37). It was a very regular occurrence from the late 1860s until the mid-1880s for … Read more