Ireland and the history of blasphemy. By David Nash For much of the twentieth century, western governments believed either that blasphemy laws were long-dead fragments of a bygone age or that they simply sat quietly and unnoticed in dust-laden legal volumes away from the public gaze. Events at the end of the twentieth century indicated … Read more
How women’s magazines handled sex and the Irish ‘guilt complex’ in the 1960s. By Ciara Meehan Dr Martin Kennedy posed this question in his column for Woman’s Choice magazine in 1968. It was followed by another question, relating to intimacy during pregnancy: ‘How are you to keep him happy during these difficult months?’ The … Read more
Why did two branches of north Kerry’s McEllistrim family take opposite sides in a bitter dispute between private creameries and the co-operative movement? By Eoin McLaughlin and Paul Sharp One of the perennial questions in Ireland’s economic history is why, despite her proximity to the dominant British market and her historical advantages, she lost … Read more
It is remarkable that three noted practitioners respectively of the arts of painting, dialectic and poetry chose a modest Connemara dwelling as their base. By John Hayes One of the most eminent philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein (b. 1889 in Vienna), made several visits to Ireland. The longest of these was … Read more
The current boldness of racist groups in the United States reminds us that the history of minority rights in that great country is a troubled one. By Mark Phelan For nineteenth-century Irish immigrants to the USA the path to acceptance and integration was difficult, with the result that prejudice and adversity are common … Read more