At the end of May County Monaghan celebrated the 400th anniversary of the battle of Clontibret where Hugh O’Neill first impressed the world with his skills of generalship by harrying and nearly destroying the army of Marshal Bagenal. Like the original undertaking, the commemoration was a triumph of local organisation. An evening of lectures on … Read more
Richard Doherty ‘Aughrim of the slaughter’, fought on 12 July 1691, Irish history’s bloodiest day, is almost the forgotten battle of the war of the kings. Aughrim need never have been fought. That it happened was due to the Frenchman Charles Chalmont, Marquis de Saint-Ruhe, generally referred to as Saint Ruth who assumed the … Read more
Colm Lennon The early afternoon of Friday, 11 March 1597, was windy but dry in Dublin. The dryness of that springtime was a welcome relief from the succession of cold and wet seasons which had preceded it. At the Liffeyside along Wood Quay and Merchant’s Quay those who laboured at unloading the … Read more
The Chief Governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland, 1536-1588Ciaran Brady(Cambridge University Press, £35) Anglicising the government of Ireland: the Irish privy council and the expansion of Tudor rule, 1556-78Jon Crawford(Irish Academic Press, £37.50) Sixteenth-century Ireland: the incomplete conquestColm Lennon(Gill & MacMillan, £14.99) Reviewed by Hiram Morgan Brady’s Chief Governors is … Read more
Trinity College Library, Dublin, yesterday acquired the first book printed in Irish. This book, Abidil gaoidheilge & caiticiosma (ABC & catechism), printed in 1571, is only the sixth item known to have been printed in Ireland and was purchased for £48,000. Only four copies of the book are recorded and that purchased by TCD was … Read more