Not since Karl Marx planned to write a short pamphlet on the nature of capital, which eventually became his multi-volume opus, has a publication project expanded so spectacularly. Billy Colfer’s The Hook Peninsula (Cork University Press, pp260, €40 hb, ISBN 1859183786) started life in 1997 as one of six short case-studies in CUP’s The atlas … Read more
John Henry Patterson was born in 1867 in Dublin. His Protestant background imbued him with a deep knowledge of the Old Testament, and he drew spiritual sustenance from historical parallels with the deeds of early biblical warriors. Not unnaturally, he was favorably inclined towards the Zionist aspirations of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then … Read more
In the 1700s Irish emigrants to America were remarkably diverse, especially in comparison with the apparent homogeneity of the Famine and post-Famine migrants. Although a majority were Presbyterians from Ulster, a third or more were Anglicans (members of the established Church of Ireland), Quakers, Methodists and other Protestant dissenters, as well as Catholics, from all … Read more
Sir,—The purpose of this letter is to add some more facts to the article on Bloody Sunday 1920 by Tim Carey and Marcus de Burca (HI 11.2, Summer 2003). The following is an account of events that happened to my father on that day. My father was Charlie Murphy (b. 29 July 1900, d. 13 … Read more
Sir,—Pat Marshall’s interesting piece on Major Sirr in your last issue (HI 11.3, Autumn 2003) neglected one aspect of Sirr’s later career: his interest in the Irish language. (Viewers of Pat Murphy’s film Anne Devlin will recall that Sirr is the only major character who speaks Irish on-screen, when talking to an informer.) It extended … Read more