In relation to Daniel Mulhall’s article “Parallel Parnell” in the May/June 2010 issue, which speculates on the course Parnell’s career might have taken if he had married in 1880 and never become involved with Katherine O’Shea: Parnell seems to be the figure of modern Irish history who most strongly attracts counterfactual speculation. This is because he … Read more
In the Celtic world, as elsewhere, canines were admired for their senses of sight, smell and hearing. Dogs were used on hunting expeditions and to guard homes, as domestic pets and as a source of food. They abound in surviving mythology and folk tradition and are well represented in religion, where they are often associated … Read more
November 7 1910 Leo Tolstoy (82), Russian novelist, author notably of War and Peace (1863–9) and Anna Karenina (1874–6), died of pneumonia in a siding at Astapovo railway station. 8 1960 Nine Irish soldiers from an eleven-man patrol of the 33rd Battalion serving as a peacekeeping force with the UN in the Congo were killed … Read more
Crises can be seen in three separate but overlapping contexts: economic fluctuations (see sidebar opposite), banking and the international context. Before 2008, the role of banks was a major issue in the US from 1929 and more briefly in 1931 in central Europe. If we seek to trace the history of bank failure in Ireland, its modest … Read more
In a previous editorial (HI 18.3, May/June 2010) I expressed the hope that once we quantified the scale of our current fiscal difficulties the only way to go was up. Well, now we know—c. €50 billion to bail out the banks and cuts of c. €15 billion in government spending over the next four years—and … Read more