Sir,—There are many good things in Ruan O’Donnell’s appraisal of my book Lone Crusader: David Thornley and the Intellectuals (reviews, HI 21.3, May/June 2013) and I know it appears churlish to draw attention to an error. David’s famous television broadcast in which, according to Jack Lynch, David swung popular feeling against the Fianna Fáil proposal … Read more
Any good news there is on the jobs front these days invariably comes courtesy of IDA-Ireland. The foreign-owned sector has fared much better than the indigenous sector over the current downturn. Since shortly after its formation in 1949 the IDA has been focusing on attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) and has become one of the … Read more
United Nations Photo Archive United Nations Photo Archive United Nations Photo Archive Frank Aiken cuts a colossal figure in twentieth-century Irish history. But in 2006, when RTÉ broadcast a documentary on him as part of its ‘Hidden History’ series, sectarian killings in County Down featured most prominently (reviewed in HI 15.1, Jan./Feb. 2007). Clearly, in … Read more
Sir, —In your entertainingeditorial on the perils of putting names to places in Ireland, you saythat nationalists find obnoxious the use of ‘Ulster’ for NorthernIreland (‘Up the Republic/Commonwealth!’, HI 17.3, May/June 2009). Butthat was not always the case. De Valera, for example, in August 1921,when questioned in the Dáil about possible talks between Sinn Féin … Read more
‘The accumulating evidence supports the view that, even before the fall of France in 1940, de Valera believed that Hitler would win the war and in payment for keeping the Allies out of the Éire ports, he would obtain Northern Ireland on his own terms,’ the US wartime minister to Ireland David Gray wrote in … Read more