On the morning of 18 August 1848, in the town of Santos Lugares in the north-west of the Buenos Aires province, two figures sat side by side, tied to chairs and blindfolded in front of a firing squad. Death did not come instantly. The soldiers were nervous and failed to shoot straight, for they knew … Read more
In June 1823, six months after being ousted from government, Bernardo O’Higgins seriously thought about going into exile in Ireland. He had been under house arrest for six months at Valparaiso, Chile’s main port city, 60 miles west of Santiago, the capital. The new government had just given him permission to leave the country. He … Read more
Between 1641 and 1653 Ireland suffered a demographic collapse of staggering proportions. Over a quarter of the population perished as a result of endemic warfare, famine and disease, including the last major outbreak of plague in the country. The architect of the English reconquest of the island, Oliver Cromwell, described Ireland as ‘a clean paper’, … Read more
So unpalatable and poisonous is the original potato that anthropologists continue to puzzle over why anyone considered it a possible food in the first place. But over 8,000 years ago someone began experimenting with this unfriendly tuber (the potato is not a root at all but a tuber, a swollen underground stem). While various species … Read more
If the modern domesticated potato were to return to the Andes to seek out its roots (sic), it might find itself in company as alien and unrecognisable as the Irish-American who visits deepest Kerry in search of long-lost kin. The fresh-faced, pale and uninteresting new potato would consider its South American relations alarmingly odd—some purple-skinned, … Read more