Sinn Féin and the politics of left republicanism Eoin Ó Broin (Pluto Press, €67.50 hb, €25 pb) ISBN 9780745324630, 978745324623Close observers of the politics of Irish historiography will have suspected that there was something odd about this book when it was reviewed prominently in the Irish Times, and commended by its resident revisionist, despite being … Read more
COLLINS, Jerome Janus (1841–81), meteorologist, Arctic explorer and founder of Clan na Gael, was born on 17 October 1841 in Cork city, the son of Mark Collins, a lime- and saltworks owner of South Main Street, Cork, and his wife Ellen (née Ryan). He attended St Vincent’s Seminary, Cork, before becoming a civil engineer. He … Read more
Union leaders were initially reluctant to establish ethnically based units but were soon swayed by the attractions of enhanced Irish recruitment to a brigade with its own Irish commanders. Significantly, Irish involvement meant the acceptance—for the first time in American life—of a large Catholic force. The brigade’s chief chaplain, Fr William Corby (later president of … Read more
At 2am on Friday 1 June 1866, Colonel John O’Neill led a Fenian army across the Niagara River to invade Canada. Tactically O’Neill was triumphant; strategically, however, everything went wrong. The assault was supposed to have been but one prong of three; the others never occurred. After winning the Battle of Ridgeway and a street … Read more
Do we need another book on the Easter Rising? There can be no harm in a good one. And Fearghal McGarry has written a very good one indeed. What makes The Rising stand out from its competitors (at least according to the blurb) is that it uses the vast corpus of testimonies collected by the … Read more