Sighle Breathnach-Lynch The Easter Rising—in which a twelve-hundred strong force took over the centre of Dublin, proclaimed the right of Irish citizens to the ownership of Ireland, fought, surrendered, and were either executed or jailed—is an event which has exercised the minds and pens of Irish historians for generations. Indeed, eighty-one years on, the interpretation … Read more
As a writer of history textbooks, Elma Collins has had a profound, if unsung, influence on the generation of students who have passed through the Southern school system over the past thirty years. She currently teaches at the Institute of Education, Dublin and tutors at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. She is an active member of … Read more
Sir,—I am one of many who don’t know much about Michael Collins, but I have done an oral history of someone who served under him from 1919 until the split. This man clearly read Tim Pat Coogan’s biography as stating that Collins was a ‘womaniser’ (contrary to Ian McKeane, HI Autumn 1995), but asserted that … Read more
Sir,—I was one of the Irish soldiers who took part in the ceremonial transfer of Cork Harbour defences from British to Irish armed forces on 11 July 1938. When Chamberlain asked Eamonn de Valera when he would like that transfer to take place, Dev replied, ‘11 July, the seventeenth anniversary of the Truce, 1921’. I … Read more
Sir,—Reading Patrick Holland’s account of the Unionist meeting in the picture gallery in Kilkenny Castle on 12 October 1912 and Brian Cleary’s account of the Byrne-Perry Summer School, one could not but feel that little has changed over the intervening eighty-three years. Mr. Holland candidly acknowledges the partisan approach of the press coverage of the … Read more