Edmund Spenser: a life Andrew Hadfield (Oxford University Press, £25) ISBN 9780199591022 Londoner Edmund Spenser (1552–99) was already writing poetry by the time he went up to Cambridge as a poor scholar. His first major work, the Shepheardes Calender, was published in 1579 and quickly became famous for its wordplay, being full of archaic usages, … Read more
This year sees the 50th anniversary of JFK’s semi-legendary visit to Ireland (a subject we’ll be tackling in our Hedge School in the National Library on 22 October), but there is a far more significant event that links Ireland and the US: the American Civil War. Perhaps as many as 200,000 Irishmen fought in the … Read more
I first wrote about the Newry museum for this column in 2005. There have been many changes since then. As some readers may know, my first job was as the museum officer in Newry, when I opened the new museum in a converted nineteenth-century coal merchant’s office as part of the arts centre. The museum … Read more
The Big House TV3, April/May 2013 Big Mountain Productions by Adrian Grant The story of the ‘big house’ and the landed estates is essentially the story of rural Ireland. Every aspect of life was affected by the fortunes of the landed class and their vast estates. Whether you were a domestic servant, a tradesman, a … Read more