Alan Gilsenan’s two-part documentary The Ghost of Roger Casement was neatly timed to coincide with new evidence on the Black Diaries controversy, which has since erupted in the letters page of the Irish Times. The programmes rightly reflected the complexity of Casement’s life, and the difficulty in analysing a character who was at the heart … Read more
Despite a growing body of historical writing on the life of General Eoin O’Duffy, there are still large gaps in our knowledge of this enigmatic figure. His various roles as organiser par excellence in the GAA, Irish Volunteers, Garda Síochána and, of course, as head of the Irish Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, are … Read more
Is it possible to write famine out of Irish history? Note, the question refers to ‘famine’, not the ‘Great Famine’. The catastrophe of 1845-49 was unlike any previous famine. In the words of Peter Solar it ‘was no ordinary subsistence crisis’. Its singularity notwithstanding, Ireland’s story is often told with famine as a fugue running … Read more
In 1853 Aristide Bouciclaut—no apparent relation of the Irish playwright—hit upon a novel way of publicising his modest drapery shop, trading as Bon Marché, in the Rue de Sèvres in Paris. He produced an attractive card, printed by the relatively new process of chromolithography, depicting an elegantly aristocratic figure paying his respects to a blushing … Read more
At 11 o’clock on the morning of Thursday 23 June 1642 General Garrett Barry and other leading members of the Catholic army of Munster were admitted to the castle of Limerick. The ancient fort (known today as King John’s Castle) had been closely besieged for the past five weeks until the hungry and sick men … Read more