It is a tragic irony that in Ireland’s fight for independence and a new beginning in 1922 we also lost the vast majority of our historical records dating back to the Middle Ages. From one of the richest holdings of medieval and early modern manuscripts in Europe, Ireland now has the misfortune of possessing one … Read more
Sir, —In connection with Micheál Ó Siochrú’s September/October article ‘The curse of Cromwell’, you may be interested in a few more points about the Cromwell statue at Westminster, most of which I picked up while doing research on the Irish Independent of the 1890s (when it was the paper of the Parnellite party). The proposal … Read more
Sir,—In an earlier letter (HI 20.5, Sept./Oct. 2012) I suggested that the last lines of Tomás Rua Ó Suilleabháin’s praise-poem ‘Sé Domhnall Binn Ó Conaill caoin’ amounted to an unambiguous aspiration to ethnic cleansing (‘go nglanfar cruinn as Éilge iad’). In taking me to task on this (in surprisingly intemperate tones), Niall Gillespie (HI 20.6, … Read more
Thomas D’Arcy McGee: passion, reason, and politics, 1825–1857, vol. I David A. Wilson (McGill–Queen’s University Press, $39.95) ISBN 9780773533578 Now a somewhat obscure figure, Thomas D’Arcy McGee is a prime subject for scholarly biography. As author David A. Wilson’s concluding paragraph notes, McGee went from extreme Irish republican to extreme Irish American Catholic to extreme … Read more
Sir,—Peter Connolly (Letters, HI 20.6, Nov./Dec. 2012) contrasts the wiping out by Tom Barry’s column of eighteen Auxiliaries at Kilmichael in November 1920 with the sparing of men from the same force by Seán MacEoin’s men at Ballinalee in February 1921. Neither Barry nor any of his men suffered injury or imprisonment as a result … Read more