Produced by Patricia Baker Newstalk 106–108FM, 3 February 2019 By John Gibney Harry Clarke’s haunting image The last hour of the night serves as the frontispiece for Patrick Abercrombie’s Dublin of the future (1922), one of numerous grandiose plans for the reconstruction of Ireland’s capital city over the centuries. Devised prior to the First World … Read more
The son of a portrait-painter, George Petrie was among the leading figures in Dublin’s intellectual circles in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century. His interests encompassed antiquarianism, painting and sketching, and he was an avid collector of ancient Irish music. His skill as an artist led to his election as a member … Read more
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) plays an important part in the story of Thady McMahon and his relationship with his associates and patrons from amongst Dublin’s intellectual élite. The RIA was established in 1786 for the purpose of ‘promoting the study of science, polite literature and antiquities’. At the time of McMahon’s arrest, George Petrie … Read more
Essex’s son is much better-known than his father. Robert joined the Elizabethan court in the mid-1580s and quickly cemented his position as a favourite of Queen Elizabeth’s. Following the death of his stepfather, Robert Dudley, first earl of Leicester, in 1588 Essex gradually ascended to become the leader of England’s war effort in the First … Read more
Though it ultimately ended in total failure, Essex’s ‘Enterprise’ nevertheless played an important part in the development of Tudor colonisation in Ireland. When the first major plantation was undertaken by the Tudors in Laois and Offaly in the 1550s it was organised by the government, but it proved a stop-start affair that did not prosper … Read more