C.S. Andrews said of his youth in turn-of-the-century Dublin that as far as inner-city Catholics were concerned ‘there was no such thing as a poor Protestant’. However, the scale of charitable activity both directed towards, and organised by, Protestants in the city would seem to indicate otherwise. The nineteenth century saw a great increase in … Read more
Over the past quarter century the Irish land question has been the subject of a barrage of historical inquiry. Traditional nationalist interpretations have been deconstructed and inverted, the class composition and objectives of agrarian movements dissected, and the triangular political relationships between these organisations, landowners and the British government examined in depth. Building on this … Read more
When I was a student in London in the late 1940s I was much impressed by Harold Laski’s love of Seeley’s dictum which he worked into nearly every lecture—‘History without politics has no fruit. Politics without history has no root’. So to read twenty years later the Irish revisionist historians was not so much a … Read more
The events of last summer raised many questions about the nature and exercise of certain aspects of unionist cultural traditions in the North. Whilst historically it is the case that only a minority of the Protestant population there has, at any time, ever had actual membership of organisations such as the Orange Order, the Royal … Read more
For the two centuries of its existence Maynooth has been close to the centre of Irish life and controversy. There is not a corner of the island which has not felt the effects of its alumni, or of decisions taken within its walls. Loved or viewed with suspicion, there is no seminary anywhere which has … Read more