Sir,—My attention has been drawn to a Sidelines item (p. 6) in the last issue (HI 19.1, Jan./Feb. 2011), which contained a couple of inaccuracies that I’m sure you’d wish corrected. Although almost universally referred to as grave-robbers, William Burke and William Hare were in fact mass-murderers and never robbed a grave in their lives, … Read more
Sir,—I found the article on Galway in 1916 by Conor McNamara (HI 19.1, Jan./Feb. 2011) very interesting and very enlightening on the attitude of the majority of the Irish population to the events of Easter week. Another view of the events in Galway is presented in a book called Danger zone by E. Keble Chatterton. … Read more
Sir,—I was somewhat disappointed with John Borgonovo’s review of my book The year of disappearances (HI 19.1, Jan./Feb. 2011). I would have expected more in the line of constructive criticism rather than the dismissal that the book received. My book, he asserts, ‘cannot be presented as serious scholarship; it is a work in which speculation … Read more
In the 1880s many, including Dr Thomas W. Croke, archbishop of Cashel, maintained that ‘ball-playing, hurling, football-kicking according to Irish rules . . . may now be said to be not only dead and buried, but in several localities to be entirely forgotten. What the country needed was an Irish organisation to bring order and … Read more
John Minahane has provided a clear and comprehensive translation of Disputatio Apologetica de jure Regni Hiberniae, which made the first full statement for Irish separatism. It was made after the 1641 rising, when a proto-national government, the Catholic Confederation of Kilkenny, was struggling for survival. This radical political endeavour was the work of Conor O’Mahony, … Read more