‘Do you kick with the left foot or the right?’ is a sure way of telling Catholic from Protestant in the North (so some people say), but a new twist has been given to it by historian Raymond O’Regan, who says that it extends to hands—the Red Hand of Ulster, that is. Using as proof … Read more
Dramatic changes in information technology, particularly in multimedia and social networking, in recent years have opened up new vistas in the presentation of research and in teaching and student enquiry. The MultiText Project in History is unique in terms of its value to Irish history teachers and students. Its essays are written by leading scholars, … Read more
The response of the Dublin government to the urgent message from the war room at Stormont was remarkable, given the historically tense relations between the two jurisdictions. While hundreds of firemen from both Glasgow and Liverpool were dispatched, they could not reach Belfast until much later on the day of 16 April, following the previous … Read more
In the Irish Free State, the land purchase annuities amounted to over £3m per annum, a substantial figure (given that the total revenue intake in the early 1930s was approximately £25m). The average burden of the annuities on the individual farmer was not huge—about 10% of net income—but it was a fixed amount, so the … Read more
Before 1951 only a few people in Ireland owned a TV set. There was no Irish television service and little prospect of one. Some owners were householders with the money to spend and a taste for the latest novelty. There were also some radio and electronics experimenters who built receivers from kits with military surplus … Read more