Sir,—Thank you very much for your article on the Concern filmcollection in the last issue (Film Eye, pp 46–7), which has recentlycome under the stewardship of the Irish Film Archive. I would like toclarify some points, which I feel are of importance when discussingthis particular collection. Writer Tom Lodge states that the films inthe Concern … Read more
In his article ‘Billy’s Boys’ in the last issue, it is a pity thatBrian Lacy does not answer the question posed in the introduction, thatis, whether William III was in fact homosexual. In researching my bookOrangeism—the making of a tradition (1999) I looked closely into thisquestion and went through as much material on William as … Read more
Sir, —When assessing Oliver Cromwell’s legacy in Ireland, we should notoverlook the religious congregations he supported in Dublin during theCommonwealth. The Protestant Dissenter congregations at Wood Street andNew Row were a source of republican ideas and pro-reform politics inthe city from their foundation through to the establishment of theUnited Irishmen in the late eighteenth century. … Read more
Sir, —In connection with Micheál Ó Siochrú’s September/October article ‘The curse of Cromwell’, you may be interested in a few more points about the Cromwell statue at Westminster, most of which I picked up while doing research on the Irish Independent of the 1890s (when it was the paper of the Parnellite party). The proposal … Read more
Thomas D’Arcy McGee: passion, reason, and politics, 1825–1857, vol. I David A. Wilson (McGill–Queen’s University Press, $39.95) ISBN 9780773533578 Now a somewhat obscure figure, Thomas D’Arcy McGee is a prime subject for scholarly biography. As author David A. Wilson’s concluding paragraph notes, McGee went from extreme Irish republican to extreme Irish American Catholic to extreme … Read more