Sir,—I wonder could any of your readers or subscribers assist with an enquiry? Several years ago a man from Galway told me of an experience during the Civil War when he was aged about eighteen. He was interned for a time by the Free State Army. He said that he had not done what he … Read more
Sir,—Desmond Fennell’s concern with ‘ideological contamination’ and ‘colonisation’ of Ireland (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, Letters) seems well placed. This has indeed been on such a scale that lack of comprehensive treatment seems explicable only because other events in recent decades, and reinvigorated interest in the Revolutionary period, have captured the imagination of historians more than … Read more
Sir,—Regarding the article on ‘Death and taxes: tobacco-growing in Ireland’ by Gearóid Ó Faoleán (HI 21.2, March/April 2013), which was most interesting, it may be of interest to your readers that the cultivation of tobacco was not confined specifically to the east coast. At the turn of the twentieth century and during the First World … Read more
Sir,—O.J. Maher is right (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, Letters): the taking of a human life is not a matter of private conscience only. Unconvincing, however, is his facile assumption that anything from a fertilised egg cell onwards is the moral equivalent of a human being. It’s a matter of history that most of the developed … Read more
The dramatic news that transcripts of controversial recordings are to be handed over to the PSNI in Northern Ireland has sent shock waves through American academia. Although it was never certain whether researchers had the authority to guarantee total confidentiality or binding terms of information disclosure, the prising open of a closed archive with a … Read more