Sir, —I must protest at the treatment given to my book Redmond: theParnellite by your reviewer in the Sept./Oct. 2008 issue. My complaintrefers not to any unfavourable evaluation of the book but to theslipshod nature of the review. There are many indications that the reviewer has only a passingacquaintance with the period covered by the … Read more
Sir, —Over the past year several letter-writers have raised the issue of sectarianism and ethnic cleansing in the Irish Revolution and afterward, for instance Nick Foley (HI 16.3, May/June) and Clive Sinclair-Poulton (HI 16.2, March/April, and HI 16.5, Sept./Oct.). The blunt answer is that human nature does not change and the present is the key … Read more
The census records for 1901 and 1911 have been by far our most popular sources, accounting for 40 per cent of productions to readers. They were the obvious choice for digitisation when we contemplated making some of our holdings available on the internet. Irish census records differ from those of other countries in that the … Read more
John Pius Boland was Ireland’s first Olympic champion but he was not our first ‘gold’ medallist—his prizes in Athens in 1896 were silver medals and olive wreaths. Up until London, the awards for first, second or other places in any Olympic final were at the discretion of the organising committee of the games concerned. Such … Read more
When John Pius Boland, born in Capel Street, Dublin, went to Athens for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 he did so as a scholar-tourist, seeking respite from a semester of study at the University of Bonn and, previous to that, his studies for a postgraduate law degree in Oxford. While in Athens, following … Read more