Listeners to Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin’s broadcast on Sunday nights of the nationwide GAA club results might be familiar with the name ‘JK Brackens’ of Templemore, Co. Tipperary, named after one of the founders of that organisation. While Bracken was a notable figure in his time through his interesting and turbulent career in the GAA, … Read more
The recollections of Ina Heron, fourth child of James Connolly, are preserved in the recently released Military Bureau collection of archives as document WS 919. As a member of Fianna Éireann she was involved in gunrunning in the preparations for the Easter Rising, and during the Rising she took dispatches into areas that men could … Read more
A man who worked alongside me under Douglas Gageby at the Evening Press subsequently wrote of him as being ‘caustic, cynical’ and ‘near scepticism’. Douglas was certainly all of the above. But as I have often observed in nature, the most succulent shellfish generally have the hardest carapaces. Underneath his outer shell he was a … Read more
When Eoin O’Mahony died in February 1970 at the age of 65 The Times said that he was the outstanding Irish talker of his time and remarked that if he had had a Boswell he was the stuff of Johnson. Born in Cork on 22 March 1905, he was educated at Clongowes, where he acquired … Read more
Following the withdrawal of the British from the 26 counties in 1922 and the creation of the Irish Free State, many of those families who had relied on their presence as a guarantee of their safety found themselves in a vulnerable position. One such family were the Phibbses of Doobeg, Bunnanadden, Co. Sligo. The … Read more