The Irish Texts Society has just launched three new books. Kevin Murray (Dept. of Early and Medieval Irish, UCC) has prepared an edition, translation and analysis of the early Irish vision-tale Baile in Scáil that throws considerable new light on its origins and development. Very topically in the light of recent public debate concerning the … Read more
Historically there are many reasons for the forgery or falsification of a document. A major incentive for such a practice occurs when a powerful nation invades a weaker one without obvious justification. A classic example in our times was the document released by the British government in February 2003, Iraq—its infrastructure of concealment, deception and … 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
MC: Tell me about your family connections with Ireland. PM: My mother’s family are Roches from County Cork, who have lived there since the middle of the thirteenth century. They are an Anglo-Irish family who always resided there—they weren’t absentees. I was brought up with a fairly ‘green’ understanding of the relationships between the people … Read more