BB: Tell us something about your background and about the people who influenced you most in your formative years. TPC: I grew up in impoverished middle-class surroundings in Monkstown, Co. Dublin. My father was a Sinn Féin activist with W.T. Cosgrave, Kevin O’Higgins and Michael Collins, setting up the local government and court system that … Read more
Kevin Haddick Flynn outlines the background to and the course of an incident that sharply divided public opinion. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the only anti-Jewish pogrom to take place on Irish soil—that which occurred in Limerick in the early months of 1904. The outrage divided public opinion, but only two people of … Read more
Daniel Mulhall delves into Joyce’s classic novel and finds it teeming with figures from Irish history History and literature are often intertwined. With the passage of time, all contemporary writing eventually becomes part of the historical record, although it must be read with care if it is to provide a helpful window on the … Read more
An eighteenth-century Whig dressed in ill-fitting nineteenth-century Tory clothing? Seán Patrick Donlan assesses the hotly contested legacy of Edmund Burke For two centuries the legacy of Edmund Burke has been hotly contested and arguably distorted by apologists and opponents alike. In his day, the London press caricatured him as a whiskey-toting Jesuit, managing to combine … Read more
Was cricket in late nineteenth-century Ireland really an élitist activity limited to the middle and upper classes? Tom Hunt assesses the evidence for County Westmeath. In July 1893 members of the Ringtown Cricket Club, Co. Westmeath, assembled on the shores of Lough Derravaragh to make the journey across the lake to play a match against … Read more