Readers who profited from Micheál Ó Siochrú’s article on Oliver Cromwell in the Sept./Oct. 2008 issue or from the book from which it is drawn—God’s executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the conquest of Ireland (Faber), also published last year—will be interested to know that his 1999 Confederate Ireland 1642–1649: a constitutional and political analysis has been … Read more
Hunger Director: Steve McQueen by Laurence McKeown I met Steve McQueen and Enda Walsh (writer) when they were in the initial stages of writing the screenplay. The meeting took place in the offices of Coiste na nIarchimí, the republican ex-prisoners’ organisation based in Beechmount Avenue just off the Falls Road, Belfast. The street still bears … Read more
John Horne (ed.) (Royal Irish Academy, €30/£25) ISBN 9781904890508 Thomas Davis Lectures, RTÉ Radio 1, 10 Nov. 2008–12 Jan. 2009 www.rte.ie/radio1/ourwar The combined authority of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and the Thomas Davis Lecture series is considerable. If one could only nominate two institutions that have sustained cultural values in Ireland through thick and … Read more
The year 1849 was a year of portents. Some, such as the reappearance of the potato blight in May or the record number of evictions (13,384), were harbingers of the suffering and social upheavals to come. Two events in that year, however, both of which took place in County Kilkenny, marked an equally noteworthy but … Read more
And the Red Poppies Dance RTÉ1 11 November 2008 by John Gibney According to the late Frank Harte, the winners write the history and the losers write the songs. In the vexing case of Ireland’s relationship with the First World War this has a particular resonance. The broadly republican ethos of independent Ireland, rooted as … Read more