Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was born in 1796 and sprang from a well-connected Banbridge family who first settled in County Down during the seventeenth century. His father, George Crozier, was a prominent solicitor who acted for the Downshires and Moiras, two of Ireland’s richest and most powerful landowners. Francis, one of thirteen children, was named … Read more
Much has appeared in the Irish media in recent months concerning the asylum granted to Axis collaborators and ‘war criminals’ in the years after 1945. The general tenor of this commentary has tended to increase the perception that Ireland’s attitude to these asylum-seekers was determined by pro-fascist or anti-Allied proclivities. On the other hand, if … Read more
‘An Appeal for Aid’ The first notice presented the contents of a cablegram sent to John Fitzgerald, president of the Irish National League, from members of the Irish Parliamentary Party. It referred to the Plan of Campaign that was then under way and emphasised the urgent need for funds to help to deal with the … Read more
‘I am a propagandist, unrepentant and unashamed’, Dorothy Macardle, author of The Irish Republic, announced in June 1939. Many readers familiar with her classic history of the Irish revolution, commissioned by her political hero Éamon de Valera, might be only too ready to concur with Macardle’s candid self-assessment. In this instance, however, she was speaking … Read more
In 1842 Richard Robert Madden published the first volume of what would prove to be one of the most influential sympathetic accounts of the 1798 rebellion in Ireland. The United Irishmen: their lives and times (7 vols, 1842–6) had an immediate impact on nationalist opinion. When the Young Ireland weekly The Nation was founded later … Read more