Sir,—Desmond Fennell’s concern with ‘ideological contamination’ and ‘colonisation’ of Ireland (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, Letters) seems well placed. This has indeed been on such a scale that lack of comprehensive treatment seems explicable only because other events in recent decades, and reinvigorated interest in the Revolutionary period, have captured the imagination of historians more than … Read more
Sir,—Hundreds of large boilers (‘Famine pots’) were brought into Ireland by the Quakers during the 1840s. Many of those have survived. I am looking for information and/or pictures of Famine pots for a forthcoming documentary. All sources will be acknowledged.—Yours etc., MATTIE LENNON Kylebeg Lacken Blessington Co. Wicklow mattielennon@gmail.com
Sir,—I read with interest Robert Ballagh’s review of the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, ‘Big book’), in particular the reference to Milton Friedman. While researching a short biography of Terence Bellew McManus many years ago I came across the following sentence in an editorial of the London Times during the … Read more
Sir,—Regarding the article on ‘Death and taxes: tobacco-growing in Ireland’ by Gearóid Ó Faoleán (HI 21.2, March/April 2013), which was most interesting, it may be of interest to your readers that the cultivation of tobacco was not confined specifically to the east coast. At the turn of the twentieth century and during the First World … Read more
Sir,—O.J. Maher is right (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, Letters): the taking of a human life is not a matter of private conscience only. Unconvincing, however, is his facile assumption that anything from a fertilised egg cell onwards is the moral equivalent of a human being. It’s a matter of history that most of the developed … Read more