Leopold H. Kerney, Irish Minister to Spain 1935–1946 Éamon Kerney (ed.) (www.leopoldhkerney.com) In this era of new technology, not all works of historical research end up in printed form. One recent publication that to date has only a website existence is by Éamon Kerney. This is a study of his father, Leopold H. Kerney, Irish … Read more
They operated like a normal political party, collected subscriptions, kept membership files and reported regularly to party headquarters. The difference with the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1930s Ireland, however, was that its headquarters was not in Dublin but in Berlin. The party’s membership—numbering from 50 to 100, depending on whether visitors are included—owed their … Read more
Eire—It was a beautiful day in Dublin. Floating down the Liffey, neat little barges with red-topped funnels, loaded with brown barrels of Guinness stout, symbolised pre-war living and good appetites. Along the riverside the sunshine accentuated, rainbow-wise, the soft greens, blues, reds and yellows with which Dublin’s tall Georgian houses are painted. It was low … Read more
In the wake of the Second World War the pillorying of ‘Éire’ for perfidy and treachery by abrasive Stormontites caused much resentment among so-called ‘southerners’ from Donegal down, who suspected that there was more than a grain of truth in the canard that the loyalists were ‘more loyal to the half-crown than to the crown’. … Read more
‘Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler, Who made the Britons squeal, Sure before the fight is ended They will dance an Irish reel.’ (War News, 21 November 1940) Seán Russell, the IRA chief of staff, spent the summer of 1940 in a ‘very large’ villa in the leafy Grunewald, near Berlin, surrounded by extensive grounds and … Read more