Long Kesh prison camp, or HMP Maze as it was later renamed in the mid-1970s, sits on a 360-acre site just outside Lisburn, Co. Antrim. It’s the site where, over a four-year period from 1971 to 1975, the British government oversaw the internment without trial of its own citizens. It’s the place where in 1981 … Read more
BRANIGAN, James Christopher (‘Jim’, ‘Lugs’) (1910–86), Garda, was born on 6 January 1910 in the South Dublin Union, James St., eldest child of John Alick Branigan, South Dublin Union official, and Ellen Branigan (née Kavanagh). The family lived in the union complex, which saw heavy fighting in 1916, when Jim witnessed the shooting dead of … Read more
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