DINNEEN, Patrick Stephen (Ó DUINNÍN, Pádraig Stiabhna) (1860–1934), was born on 25 December 1860 on a smallholding in Carn townland, near Rathmore in the Sliabh Luachra district of County Kerry, the fifth of ten children of Maitiú Ó Duinnín, farmer and livestock trader, and Máire Ní Dhonnchadha (d. 1917). His parents, who had been evicted … Read more
William Richard Murphy was born in County Wexford in 1890 but was orphaned at an early age and brought up in Belfast by an elder cousin. He graduated in education in Dublin and returned to Belfast to teach on the Falls Road. When the First World War broke out he joined the British army as … Read more
The ‘other Arans’ lay off the coast of County Down, and they are no longer known as Arans because they have lost their Gaelic name. This Gaelic name, which itself supplanted an unknown number of earlier names, began to be displaced in the early medieval period when the Norse used the islands as a trading … Read more
The Humanities Building, UCD, was the venue in September 2005 for a three-day conference—‘Eamon de Valera 30 Years On’—co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute of Ireland, the Fianna Fáil party and the Mícheál O’Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation. Apart from the many fine speakers, former taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald made many significant … Read more
Ewan Morris recounts the heated debate provoked by the introduction of Percy Metcalfe’s coinage designs in 1928. The introduction of the euro has finally seen the disappearance of Percy Metcalfe’s animal designs from the coinage of the Republic of Ireland, almost 75 years after they first appeared on the Free State’s coins. Although decimalisation had … Read more