The gradual dismantling of the Penal Laws in the later eighteenth century fostered a modest spate of chapel-building across Ireland. Emancipation under the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, however, encouraged an accelerated building programme celebrating the liberated status of the Catholic Church. More often than not, each new church was a communal effort combining fundraising … Read more
The success of Thomas Spring Rice in the Limerick election of 1820 was due to the old style of electioneering, as well as to significant developments in the nature of Irish politics. On one level, constituencies continued to be fought over by wealthy, landed patrons, who deployed their money and influence to secure votes for … Read more
Few figures in Irish history have dominated their times in the way that Daniel O’Connell did. For three decades he personified the aspirations of nationalists and was revered by millions. The popular adulation that he enjoyed, however, was not a natural phenomenon that somehow ‘happened’. In many ways it stemmed from the deliberate and remarkably … Read more
I am very pleased to have been invited to mark here in the Reform Club the 150th anniversary of the death of Daniel O’Connell. It is an institution, after all, that was not only founded at the time of O’Connell’s greatest prominence by men who were colleagues in his endeavours, but which in its name … Read more
BS: Could you explain the origins of your interest in history? JM: I would say that historians are born, not made. I did not become a historian for ideological or monetary reasons but rather because that was what I wanted to do. From an early age I was aware of a sense of the past … Read more