The Dublin Broadcasting Station (2RN) began operating in January 1926. The Cork Broadcasting Station 2CK started up the following year. Both were operated by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. Studios and transmitters were based in urban centres and were low-powered. The director of 2RN, Seamus Clandillon, a countryman himself, was keenly aware of the … Read more
The ‘island of dreams’ notion hardly applies to the small islands off the north and west coasts of Ireland. These have always been what Americans would call ‘hardscrabble’ places. Island life was especially hard in the past. The unusual survival of census documents from 1821 for the Aran Islands demonstrates this clearly. They show a … Read more
Both these books contain stern critiques of twentieth-century Irish nationalism, which has underpinned the creation of a sovereign twenty-six-county Republic. They represent interdisciplinary forays into history by on the one hand two sociologists from Cork and Belfast and on the other by a British defence specialist with rather mixed results. Rethinking Irish History represents the … Read more
Bodin, Hobbes, Hegel, Weber, Troeltsch and Von Gierke were the political philosophers whom the late Professor James Hogan used lecture us on as his students in University College Cork in the late 1950s. These days it would be unusual for a professor of history to put political theory at the centre of his teaching. But … Read more
The commemoration of those Irishmen who died in the British forces during World War I is still a contentious issue in southern Ireland. For many, the manner in which the dead are honoured, and the wearing of symbols like the poppy carry deep political significance. During the 1920s and 1930s the issue was even more … Read more