The Big House in the North of Ireland: land, power and social elites, 1878–1960 Olwen Purdue (University College Dublin Press, Ä60hb/Ä28pb) ISBN 9781906359218 hb, 9781906359256 pb Singing of the beleaguered stately homes of England, Noel Coward observed: ‘Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt And frequently mortgaged to the hilt Is … Read more
Robert Flaherty’s 1934 docu-drama Man of Aran was recently included in IMMA’s remarkable exhibition The Moderns. This decision was unlikely to have been prompted by the subject-matter alone, for the film has a twofold significance. In Irish terms, Man of Aran is indeed a unique visual depiction of life on the Aran Islands in the … Read more
A history of the media in Ireland Christopher Morash (Cambridge University Press, £45) ISBN 9780521843928 The Revd Alexander R. C. Dallas was convinced that the second coming of Christ was due in 1872. Unconvinced that the Catholics of Ireland would appreciate this, in January 1846 he arranged for a simultaneous letter-drop across the country. … Read more
In 1911 Edward Kenny and his wife Anne lived with their four children, Elleanor (17 years), Josephine (14), Anne (6) and baby Edward (‘1 and 6/12’!), in No.1a Whitefriar Place, Dublin. They shared three rooms with Mrs Elizabeth Monaghan (70) and her ‘relative’ Elizabeth (20), the Kenny family occupying two of the rooms and the … Read more
The film Goodbye Mr Chips (the 1939 version, please) has much to recommend it, not least the delightfully heavy-handed way it has of signalling important dates and historical landmarks as it tells its fifty-year story. Consider the scene on the public-school housemaster Chipping’s first retirement. As he leaves the school gates one evening in June … Read more