Sir,—I read Terence O’Reilly’s article (HI 19.4, July/August 2011) with interest, as I’m sure did many readers who had served in the FCA, for over the years it gave scores of thousands of citizens either their only taste of soldiering or the basis for their professional careers. It’s true that the Defence Forces were underfunded, … Read more
Inghinidhe na hÉireann/Daughters of Ireland was founded by Maud Gonne MacBride in 1900. Ironically, in view of later events, the organisational meeting took place at Easter 1900.The organisation was solely for women and adopted St Brigid as patron. Its agenda was political, social and feminist: it opposed the Irish Parliamentary Party and Home Rule, opting … Read more
Marie Bourke is to be congratulated for writing a comprehensible and detailed account of museums in Ireland, as it is a complicated story. For most of the period under discussion Ireland was not an independent country, so it could not rely on a royal patron to found institutions, as was the case in many European … Read more
The historiography of Irish republicanism has greatly improved in recent years thanks to authors such as Brian Hanley, Richard English and Martyn Frampton. This book, Matt Treacy’s first, adds significantly to this growing body of work, charting the internal debates and developments within the IRA and Sinn Féin from the collapse of the ill-fated border … Read more
The Tenements was an ambitious four-part series about Dublin’s notorious inner-city slums. Alongside the legacy of the Vikings and the impressive edifices of Georgian Dublin, the existence of the tenements is one of the best-known aspects of Dublin’s history, famously depicted in Seán O’Casey’s trilogy and James Plunkett’s Strumpet City. But this heritage was perhaps … Read more