18th–19th – Century History

Its own art department

The theatre had its own art department, which in the 1940s was under the direction of the Limerick painter Fergus O’Ryan. O’Ryan was joined in the early ’40s by a teenage assistant, James Mahon. The theatre’s scene dock and art department had absorbed the old premises of the Freeman’s Journal in Townshend Street. Set design, … Read more

Organ players

Of the Theatre Royal’s organ-players (Alban Chambers, Gordon Spicer, Norman Metcalfe and Tommy Dando), Norman Metcalfe’s career spanned a trajectory from church organ to cine-variety to television, where he worked on the RTÉ quiz show Quicksilver. The prototype for that quiz, Double or Nothing, was first staged at the Theatre Royal in 1942. The Englishman … Read more

Atlas of the Great Irish Famine

Atlas of the Great Irish FamineJohn Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds) (Cork University Press, €59) ISBN 9781859184790
Atlas of the Great Irish Famine
John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds)
(Cork University Press, €59)
ISBN 9781859184790

When I got my review copy of the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, I was startled by the heft of the book; this is a seriously weighty tome! In spite of its cumbersome format, however, Cork University Press is to be congratulated for a fine publication with excellent production values. As far as content is concerned, ‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’: this is an atlas, compiled and edited by geographers. According to the introduction, the cartographic journey to the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine ‘began almost twenty years ago with a discussion in the Department of Geography, University College Cork’. Anyone wishing to study or research the Famine will discover a fascinating assembly of relevant material contained in the maps, diagrams, graphs, illustrations, statistics and essays that adorn this publication. There is one major drawback, however—the absence of a proper index. There is, as you would expect from geographers, an index of places, but the reader will find this less than helpful when trying to make sense of the multitude of facts contained in the atlas.

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