One day, when Danno was twelve, Dreenlomane school was host to an inspector. The inspector stayed until the end of the day and then left in his car. The night before had seen a lot of rain and while driving along the road he got into difficulty: his front right-hand wheel slipped into a roadside … Read more
Danno O’Mahony was born on 29 September 1912 to Daniel and Susan O’Mahony at the family farm in Dreenlomane, Ballydehob, Co. Cork. He had six brothers and one sister. The parish priest was astonished when baptising Danno, saying that he was the strongest child he’d ever seen. As a boy he was abnormally large and … Read more
May 11 1971 Seán Lemass, revolutionary, founding member of Fianna Fáil (1926) and taoiseach (1959–66), died. 13 198 Peadar O’Donnell (93), revolutionary, agitator and novelist, died. 15 1910 The Association of United Irishwomen, renamed the Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA) in 1934, which sought to provide rural women with a social outlet and … Read more
We in Ireland pride ourselves on the fact that our history ‘lives’, that the old and the new can often be found happily coexisting. On a fine October day in the Phoenix Park in 1991 there was an apparent demonstration of this rhyming of past and present. As a now fairly well-known photograph shows, then … Read more
In a magnanimous gesture to our nearest neighbours, having recently inflicted morale-sapping defeats in both rugby and cricket (once regarded as ‘foreign games’ in some quarters), the Irish government has invited Queen Elizabeth II to our shores. No doubt this will revive the old Gay Byrne joke of the 1980s, that if the queen of … Read more