The Recruiting Officer George Farqhuar Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Dec. 207–Jan. 2008 by Eamon O’Flaherty Lynn Parker’s revival of The Recruiting Officer at the Abbey follows a string of brilliant productions of eighteenth-century Irish plays with the Rough Magic theatre company. Parker and Rough Magic have a wide repertoire ranging across the centuries—including the brilliant Improbable … Read more
ROS, Amanda McKittrick (1860–1939), was born Anna Margaret McKittrick on 8 December 1860 in Drumaness, Ballynahinch, Co. Down, fourth child of Edward Amlave McKittrick, head teacher at Drumaness High School, and Eliza McKittrick (née Black). She followed her father into teaching and as early as 1884 attended Marlborough Teacher Training College, Dublin. During her teaching … Read more
In recent years Irish scholars have become increasingly appreciative of early maps as a record of past landscapes, past geographical knowledge (and ignorance) and past geopolitical attitudes. To appreciate this trend one need only consider the successive fascicles of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, the numerous early-map facsimiles in the Atlas of the Irish rural … Read more
In the 1940s Myles na gCopaleen in his ‘Crushkeen Lawn’ column in the Irish Times denounced de Valera for wasting taxpayers’ money on the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, whose only purpose, claimed Myles, was to prove that there was no God and two St Patricks. What had provoked his ire were two lectures: one … Read more
Illinois native Margaret Hallem was checking up on her Irish roots at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC when she mentioned her grandmother, who had been due to sail on the doomed White Star liner Titanic but missed the trip owing to bad weather. She then revealed that her family still had the ticket—one … Read more