A recent visitor exposed to the apocalyptic reporting of the Irish economic crisis in the USA told me that he was surprised not to find tumbleweed on Grafton Street. How should we respond to this schadenfreude—with agreement? Rage? Squirming? Silence? The historian’s response has to be the long-standing one—the owl of Minerva flies at dusk: … Read more
Sir,—I refer to Jackie Giddings’s letter (Platform, HI 19.5, Sept./Oct. 2011) concerning difficulties she experienced in using genealogy centres and the response from Brian Donovan of Eneclann.Brian is correct in pointing to the lack of significant central funding of, and commitment to, local archives. It is important to state, however, that there are at present … Read more
Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. I was immediately transported back to my teenage years while leafing through Gary O’Neill’s book. Having been part of the early Punk scene in Dublin, memories come flooding back while looking through the section on the 1970s and ’80s. The book itself is a photographic record of those different youth … Read more
The history of the sexuality of Ireland reveals the nation to be something of an oddity. No history is complete without reference to the range of demographic characteristics that set us apart. In 1966, for example, Ireland had the lowest marriage rate in Europe, yet it had the highest marital fertility rate. The percentage of … Read more
Michael Davitt: freelance radical and frondeur Laurence Marley (Four Courts Press, €45) ISBN 9781846820663 Michael Davitt once took the sort of questionnaire that would now be found in a glossy magazine. We learn from it that his heroes were ‘those who minimise suffering’; his favourite food was ‘anything purchased by my own energy’; his favourite … Read more