A terrible beauty Title Films by John Gibney The General Post Office on Dublin’s O’Connell Street looms large in the iconography of the Easter Rising. Its position on the main thoroughfare north of the River Liffey and its role as the headquarters of the ‘forces of the Irish Republic’ ensure that it remains synonymous … Read more
Sir,—Desmond Fennell’s comment about the Americanisation of Ireland called to mind Conor Cruise O’Brien’s observation, more than 40 years ago, that ‘the people of the South [the Republic] are now more Anglicised than at any time under British rule. Television is a more powerful weapon of acculturation than bayonets.’—Yours etc., MICHAEL GALLIGAN Dublin 5
Sir,—I wonder could any of your readers or subscribers assist with an enquiry? Several years ago a man from Galway told me of an experience during the Civil War when he was aged about eighteen. He was interned for a time by the Free State Army. He said that he had not done what he … Read more
Sir,—Desmond Fennell’s concern with ‘ideological contamination’ and ‘colonisation’ of Ireland (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, Letters) seems well placed. This has indeed been on such a scale that lack of comprehensive treatment seems explicable only because other events in recent decades, and reinvigorated interest in the Revolutionary period, have captured the imagination of historians more than … Read more
Sir,—I read with interest Robert Ballagh’s review of the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, ‘Big book’), in particular the reference to Milton Friedman. While researching a short biography of Terence Bellew McManus many years ago I came across the following sentence in an editorial of the London Times during the … Read more