In Ireland we pride ourselves on our historical awareness. The Irish are interested in history, and in their own history in particular. This is obvious at a personal level in, for example, our collective excited engagement with the 1901 and 1911 censuses when they were made available to us on-line in recent years. At a … Read more
In the present climate of cynicism, where the stock of politicians is only marginally above that of bankers, property developers and paedophile priests, it is hard to believe that not so long ago images of political figures—Tone, Emmett, O’Connell, Parnell, etc.—regularly featured on the walls of Irish homes. It is equally hard to believe that … Read more
The expression ‘hidden gem’ is so overused as to be almost valueless but it can be properly applied to St Mary’s Abbey. It really is hidden up a small lane off Capel Street in Dublin. Most of the people living thereabouts, never mind in Dublin as a whole, hardly know of its existence, yet it … Read more
The Tenements was an ambitious four-part series about Dublin’s notorious inner-city slums. Alongside the legacy of the Vikings and the impressive edifices of Georgian Dublin, the existence of the tenements is one of the best-known aspects of Dublin’s history, famously depicted in Seán O’Casey’s trilogy and James Plunkett’s Strumpet City. But this heritage was perhaps … Read more
The recent death of Otto von Habsburg marked the end of an epoch in European history. The eldest son of the last reigning Austrian emperor, his death brings to an end a line stretching back to Charlemagne, the original Holy Roman Emperor. He was born in 1912 and became head of the imperial family on … Read more