After the Phoenix Park murders in May 1882, Gladstone introduced a stringent crimes act and created at Dublin Castle what was intended to be a permanent secret service department: the Crime Special Branch, led by an ‘Assistant Under-Secretary for Police and Crime’. From July 1882 until January 1887 this position was occupied by Edward George … Read more
In the run-up to the soccer World Cup of 2002 the bust-up between Ireland manager Mick McCarthy and star player Roy Keane in Saipan caused a huge controversy and divided the nation. This was not the first time that the ‘beautiful game’ caused upheaval in Irish society. Back in the 1950s the ‘garrison town game’ … Read more
The three primary dynamics of medieval society were the control of the production of wealth, the raising of armies for war, and the administration of justice for the achievement of civic order. Such functions did not operate in a vacuum but used a hierarchical spatial system, or a system of local, regional and provincial territorial … Read more
From about 1730 Ireland experienced a series of communications developments that pro-foundly altered the opportunities to move around the island. Road, canal and, later, rail initiatives meant that by about 1860 a communications revolution had occurred. A wide-ranging ‘time–space compression’, as it is termed by some geographers, radically reduced the time, and to some extent … Read more
‘Depression or no depression, the cinema grows more popular everyday in Ireland—already there are more than 30 cinemas in Dublin with more to come. In face of these facts, it may seem perverse to ask if anyone in Ireland is really interested in the cinema at all’ (‘Film Notes’, Irish Times, 29 June 1935, p. … Read more