A CANDID, METICULOUS AND OCCASIONALLY HUMOROUS ACCOUNT OF EASTER WEEK By Anne Carey Following the 1916 Rising, Robert Leask, older brother of Dr Harold G. Leask, author of Irish castles and castellated houses (1941) and Inspector of National Monuments from 1922 to 1949, set down on paper a candid, meticulous and occasionally humorous account of … Read more
‘Imagining the past to remember the future’?: Easter 1916 in 2016 By Fearghal McGarry In ‘Easter, 1916’, Yeats identified the sacrifice of the insurgents with resurrection, just as Patrick Pearse had intended: ‘Life springs from death’. Many veterans also recalled the rebellion as transformative. ‘Then came like a thunderclap the 1916 Rising’, recorded Ernie O’Malley, … Read more
‘IS IT STILL HELD THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT MAKING IT A PARTY DEMONSTRATION?’—RICHARD MULCAHY, EASTER 1935 By Allison Martin Over the years, Easter Rising commemorations have taken on many different guises and have been used to further different agendas, depending on contemporary circumstances. The 1920s and the restoration of the GPO In common with … Read more
ONE OF THE FEW BRITISH OFFICERS TO DISTINGUISH HIMSELF ON AND OFF THE BATTLEFIELD IN IRELAND IN 1916 By James Quinn The events of Easter Week 1916 saw heroism in many different forms. Not least was the moral heroism shown by a Dublin-born British army officer, Sir Francis Patrick Fletcher Vane, whose dogged attempts to … Read more
WHAT WAS THE CONTEXT OF ONE OF THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL INCIDENTS OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE? By Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc The night before the truce that ended the War of Independence, four British soldiers—Harold Daker, Henry Morris, Alfred Camm and Albert Powell—were abducted by an IRA unit in Cork. Word soon reached Connie Neenan, … Read more