Family background: Protestant evangelicals and socialists

Virtually no Irish or even Ulster history was taught at the school I attended on Belfast’s Shankill Road. Thus when I left school at the age of fourteen I was completely unprepared for what was to come. I grew up in a devoutly evangelical Protestant home, where I was told stories of our suffering and … Read more

Curious experiments: science, commerce and sectarianism in eighteenth-century Dublin

Today, the sole copy of the 1743 poster, poorly printed on cheap paper and about the size of a modern A3 page, survives in Marsh’s Library in Dublin. There is an unmistakable element of showmanship to the ‘curious Experiments’, and one can easily imagine Boyle Godfrey, or one of his associates, uttering the immortal lines ‘Roll … Read more

‘Akwiten’ canoe

Sir, —Allow me to respond to your ‘Sidelines’ piece in the last issue(HI 17.3, May/June 2009). I was a member of the Maliseet-Wolastoqiyik‘Akwiten’ canoe repatriation group, along with Chief Candice Paul andother St Mary’s First Nation community members. As a dualIrish–Canadian citizen, I provided some advice on how best to proceedin Ireland. I say ‘was’ … Read more