CK: What is the nature of this collection? VL: The Bureau of Military History was established by the government in 1947 with the remit of gathering material relating to the period 1913 to 1921. So they set about establishing who was alive and interviewing those people. CK: What kind of people were they looking for? … Read more
The events of Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, are generally regarded as having marked a decisive turning-point in the military struggle between the British forces and the IRA, the military wing of the underground Dáil government. Three separate but connected events occurred on Bloody Sunday. First came the killings by Michael Collins’s ‘squad’ of twelve … Read more
For many people the works of Jack B. Yeats, Paul Henry and their contemporaries are evocative of a simple, uncomplicated lifestyle associated with the west of Ireland. While Yeats developed as the major artist of the early twentieth century, Henry emerged as Ireland’s leading landscape painter. It was largely Henry’s vision of the west that … Read more
Few periods of history have produced such a wealth of remarkable stories as the heroic age of expeditions to the Antarctic about 100 years ago. Little more than two decades of exploration threw up a series of powerful dramas that encapsulated the very essence of discovery—endurance, courage and tragedy. In the thick of it all … Read more
The New York draft riots of 1863, which feature in the violent finale of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, were the worst in American history, causing over 100 deaths and 1.5 millio n dollars’ worth of damage, about 150 million dollars in today’s money. Starting on Monday 13 July 1863 as a protest against … Read more