Derrynane House, Co. Kerry, once known as Derrynane Abbey, was the ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell, one of the most celebrated figures in modern Irish history. From his infancy to his death in Genoa in 1847, Daniel and his family spent most of their summers at Derrynane. Described as the ‘Mecca of the lovers of … Read more
Three years before his death in 1847, Daniel O’Connell was celebrated in Martin Chuzzlewit, the novel of his favourite writer, Charles Dickens. The section of the book (see panel above) was based on a real-life account of a Delaware Repeal Association meeting, and confirmed O’Connell in his reputation as one of the great international champions of … Read more
Dublin in the 1740s was a Protestant city, and one that was alive to the hair-splitting controversies that stirred up the non-conformist world. Arminians, Baptists, Bradilonians, Muggletonians, Quakers, Socinians and Unitarians all found a ready audience. Into this cacophony came John Cennick, a young evangelical preacher of magnetic power, who brought with him the practices of … Read more
In the newly independent Irish Free State the Catholic Church was deeply insecure about its role in the new state, which had been born out of violence—a violence, moreover, that had revealed how unstable and volatile its flock could be. The ruthlessness and cruelty of the Civil War had appalled churchmen, and the Catholic Church’s … Read more
Depending on the source and time, Tigernán Ua Ruairc (ob. 1172), the great twelfth-century king of Bréifne, was variously described as a ‘man of great power for a long time’, the ‘surpasser of the Irish in power and in abundance’ and a ‘one-eyed villain, meditating treachery’. In his youth he was anathematised as the perpetrator … Read more