Sir, —Your Jan./Feb. 2008 issue proves that controversy still haunts the Irish revolutionary period. Brian Hanley (‘Fear and loathing at Coolacrease’) rightly cautions against emotive approaches to the past, yet he steps into another ahistorical snare: believing that our present republic is a more or less inevitable consequence of the events of that period, rather … Read more
Sir, —Like Ian Chapple (‘Gaelic gripes’, Letters, HI 15.6, Nov./Dec.2007), ‘usually I read your magazine from cover to cover withenthusiasm and interest’. I fell on your excellent issue on Imeacht nanIarlaí/Flight of the Earls with extra interest. Although I was broughtup as ‘a monoglot Anglophone’, as Ian Chapple describes himself, unlikehim I did not find … Read more
‘Let’s hear him deny it’ RTÉ is to be congratulated for its recent Hidden History series. In general these were a model of how to present sometimes complex (and controversial) subjects to a wider public. Thus William Martin Murphy, while not quite shaking off his well-deserved image as the ‘villain’ of the 1913 Dublin Lockout, … Read more
Sir, —I am grateful to the Revd Canon and Dr Silke for his historiographical criticism of the special Flight of the Earls issue of History Ireland (15.4, July/August 2007) as a whole and for his comments on my own offering to the journal. What a pity that the internationally recognised authority on Kinsale and on … Read more