‘History is the new sex, it is everywhere’, I am reliably informed by a fecund economist. This new book, carefully edited by Alan Hayes of Arlen Press, who also published Margaret Mac Curtain’s Ariadne’s thread (reviewed in HI 16, Sept./Oct. 2008), concentrates on vital socio-economic matters. While the ‘sexy history’ is concerned with commemoration of … Read more
‘I am a silk weaver by trade and have been employed by the Transport Union as band instructor. During my instruction of these bands they became part of the Citizen Army and from this I was asked to become a drill instructor. I had no commission whatever in the Citizen Army’, declared Michael Mallin, who … Read more
Jubilees just aren’t what they used to be. In June 1897 Maud Gonne organised a counter-campaign of defiance to the official celebrations, a magic lantern projection from the National Club in Dublin. Which Ireland was on show that evening, in a capital illuminated with giant ‘VR’ monograms? Beamed across what is now Parnell Square were … Read more
Handball is known to have been played in Ireland from at least the mid-1500s. Its origins are likely shared with the contemporaneous games of real or royal tennis, palla, pelota and Eton fives. While royal tennis was played in purpose-built courts from the early 1500s, handball, like pelota (Basque region) and palla (Tuscany), was predominantly … Read more
The first edition of the Atlas of the Irish rural landscape (1997) was immediately hailed as a classic. For its time it was a ground-breaking publication, featuring a previously unsurpassed array of maps, aerial photographs and detailed explanatory text combining broad overviews of Irish rural settlement with detailed treatments of individual regions. Perhaps unavoidably, the … Read more