Within a year the euphoria both on and off the pitch had long since evaporated. By May 1974 the Ulster Workers’ Council strike had put paid to the Sunningdale power-sharing experiment, and Northern Ireland was to endure another quarter-century of violence. The Republic had already missed out on qualification for the 1974 World Cup before … Read more
In the summer of 1972 the Republic of Ireland soccer team was invited to play in a friendly tournament in Brazil to celebrate the 150th anniversary of that country’s independence. The Republic had been on a terrible run, which had reached its nadir the previous year with a 6–0 thrashing by Austria on Sunday 10 … Read more
Patrick Pearse remains one of the most contested and most elusive figures of the revolutionary period, yet the Pearse Papers (MS 21,046–MS 21,097) contain a wealth of biographical information on all aspects of the Pearse family’s various political, business and artistic endeavours. Some of the most affecting manuscripts in this collection include handwritten drafts with … Read more
Many of the National Library’s most valuable collections pertaining to the Irish struggle for independence were catalogued in the 1930s and ’40s, when the institution’s expertise and resources were at a premium. As a consequence (as many readers may have discovered), the catalogue descriptions of some material pertaining to seminal revolutionaries, including Patrick Pearse, Bulmer … Read more
Ireland’s connection to rubber is not at first obvious. In the popular imagination of recent decades it is bound up with somewhat negative readings to do with the ban imposed by the Catholic Church on the sale of rubber prophylactics. More sinister was the deployment by the British army of rubber bullets during the troubles … Read more