On the final night of John F. Kennedy’s trip to Ireland in 1963, the 46-year-old American president took advantage of a small dinner setting at Áras an Uachtaráin to pose a personal question to the 80-year-old president of Ireland, Eamon de Valera. The first head of state to honour the Easter Rising’s executed leaders at … Read more
Shortly before noon on Easter Monday 1916, Catherine Foster left her home in 18 Manor Place in Stoneybatter, pushing her two-year-old child, John Francis, in his pram towards the city centre. As she reached the junction of North King Street, she encountered a barricade being hastily built by the Volunteers under the leadership of Piaras … Read more
It is supposed that Pope Leo X gave a harp or cláirseach to Henry VIII at the same period as Fidei Defensor during that honeyed pre-Reformation period. The symbol was distinctive enough to separate the Irish coinage from passing into English currency. Sometimes the harp came between Henry and three of his wives, placing the … Read more
Sir,—Chartered Land, the present owners of the Carlton site, have now published their Ministerial Consent Application for proposed work to the national monument at Moore Street/Moore Lane that honours the memory and sacrifice of the men and women of 1916. The listed nature and extent of demolition in this application represents an unprecedented, unacceptable and … Read more
Sir,—Desmond Fennell’s comment about the Americanisation of Ireland called to mind Conor Cruise O’Brien’s observation, more than 40 years ago, that ‘the people of the South [the Republic] are now more Anglicised than at any time under British rule. Television is a more powerful weapon of acculturation than bayonets.’—Yours etc., MICHAEL GALLIGAN Dublin 5