Captain Jack White, an unsung hero of the Irish Revolution, first published his autobiography Misfit in 1930. He was an extraordinarily complex man and difficult to fit into any convenient slot. He was born into a loyalist and middle-class family, the son of Field Marshal Sir George White, governor of Gibraltar. He was brought up … Read more
Richard Whately was possibly the strangest archbishop Ireland has ever known. An eccentric Oxford professor of political economy, he was appointed Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin in 1831 and remained in office until 1863. A new biography by Bryan MacMahon, Eccentric archbishop: Richard Whately of Redesdale, has just been published by the Kilmacud–Stillorgan Local … Read more
Mollie Gill, often known as Maire, was born on 24 March 1891, one of four girls in a family of seven. Her father was a shoemaker and the family lived in a cottage in Murphystown, Co. Dublin, but from the age of 11 Mollie had been exposed to a different world when her older sister … Read more
Anyone who has seen Brian Friel’s new play The Home Place should be interested in the descriptions of life in Donegal at the period of the play in the accounts of the Congested Districts Board. The board was set up by the British government in 1891 to improve conditions in the overcrowded western area. A … Read more
Over the course of the Easter Rising of 1916, amongst reinforcements moved from England to assist those troops already in Ireland were two battalions of the Sherwood Foresters, recruited from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. One of the Sherwood battalions had been grievously mauled by the Irish Volunteer snipers defending Mount Street bridge, which controlled the route … Read more