On 17 April 1920, a coroner’s jury investigating the shooting of Cork lord mayor (and IRA brigade commander) Tomás MacCurtain issued its famous finding of ‘wilful murder’ against Prime Minister David Lloyd George and top civil and police officials in Ireland. The verdict provoked a predictable response from, amongst others, the Irish Times, which mocked … Read more
In 1949 the North held its first official women’s championships and hired Franz Stampfl to promote athletics in the province. Stampfl would later coach Roger Bannister to the world’s first sub-four-minute mile, and in the North he helped to produce three outstanding Olympians. Thelma Hopkins broke the world high jump record in May 1956 and … Read more
The outstanding figure from the early years of Irish women’s athletics was Ellie Mary ‘Babe’ Leahy from Charleville, Co. Limerick, a sister of Olympians Con, Patrick and Tim. Ellie, a tall, athletic woman, regularly took part in high jump exhibitions and her brother Con thought her the best jumper in the family. In a diary, … Read more
Ever since James Joyce’s pioneering biographer Richard Ellmann pronounced that the character of the ‘Citizen’ in Joyce’s novel Ulysses was modelled on the Gaelic Athletic Association’s founder Michael Cusack, the label ‘anti-Semite’ has tarnished Cusack’s reputation. Two screen depictions of the ‘Citizen’ have been noteworthy—a particularly powerful performance by Geoffrey Golden in Joseph Strick’s 1967 … Read more
The Irish revolution produced three memoirs that tower above all others, and each one lends its title to an episode of this useful and engaging series. Tom Barry was the son of an RIC officer who learned his trade in the British Army before deploying his skills in a rather different cause back home. Dan … Read more