As in other parts of the British Isles, ball games were a popular form of recreation in Ireland long before the modern versions of the games that became soccer and rugby were refined by English public schools during the nineteenth century and had their rules of play standardised by the Football Association (in 1863) and … Read more
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a devoted and courageous advocate of Irish freedom, but this aspect of his life has long been downplayed or ignored. When he was alive, his poetry was rarely published and his prose ignored. He lived as an outcast from his family and his class. Shelley despised the England he grew up … Read more
When examining the histories of particular marchlands (border regions) through the medieval and early modern periods, it is best practice to avoid sweeping and speculative theses and to begin by employing that much-maligned and least fashionable of historical approaches—the historical narrative. The most important, yet most neglected, of these interfaces were those of the Irish … 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