The nearest Orange lodge to Ballinamore was Corgar Loyal Orange Lodge 332, and it was there that Youell joined the Orange Institution. LOL 332 had been continually in existence since 1798, with one of the strongest historical lineages of the lodges of Leitrim. Ballinamore had been the scene of serious rioting in the early nineteenth … Read more
Neither the Irish government nor Comerford may have been aware of it, but Lt. Col. Guy Symonds was not held in high regard in British fire service circles. He had served as a gunnery officer during the First World War and was invalided home from the Italian front and given a post with the Ministry … Read more
Before Dr McCartan had set sail for his ill-fated assignment in Moscow it was becoming clear that the presence of his two Bolshevik contacts in America was no longer acceptable to the US government. The Palmer raids increasingly took their toll on American left-wing and pro-Soviet circles, and foreigners were especially targeted for arrest and … Read more
Born to British parents in Calais in 1821, Ford Madox Brown was educated at art schools in Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Paris before moving to London in 1846. In 1848 he received a letter from a young student at the Royal Academy asking whether he would consent to tutor him. Brown agreed and thus came … Read more
Charles O’Conor, a Catholic antiquarian in County Roscommon, saw the potential of print to disseminate a more accurate and flattering view of Ireland and thereby to swing opinion, in Britain and continental Europe, towards a relaxation of the notorious penal laws. He was probably unequalled in his competence to decipher and interpret Gaelic manuscripts. At … Read more