Sir, —I greatly enjoyed Helena Kelleher Kahn’s piece on ‘The Yelverton Affair’ of 1861 (HI 13.1, Jan./Feb. 2005). A cause célèbre can be like a time capsule, accurately preserving incidentally forgotten aspects of history, society and sensibility. Ms Kahn is certainly right in saying that the Yelvertons had an ambiguous reputation. The founder of the … Read more
Sir, —If Sir Henry Wilson (Henry Hughes Wilson, to give him his full name) is best remembered for the circumstances of his death, why then were we not told about his assassins—Reginald Dunn (known as ‘Reggie’ Dunn among the earliest group of Irish students at St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham) and Joseph O’Sullivan—both ex-British … Read more
A new society dedicated to the study of sports history was launched at a highly successful conference in Dublin in February. The sports history conference, which was hosted by the Humanities Institute of Ireland at University College, Dublin, on 18 and 19 February 2005, was the first such venture to be held in the Republic … Read more
The least you could expect from a city council is that it would get its own address right, but not so Dublin City Council. For the last twenty years the Irish-language version of the street signs outside the Civic Offices have read Cé na Coille (the Forest Quay), rather than Cé an Adhmaid (the Wood … Read more