‘’Pon my word, taking it all in, that young man didn’t do so badly by my Custom House’, muses a congenial ghost of James Gandon in a Dublin Opinion cartoon from 1953; he is pondering Michael Scott’s boldly modernist Busáras from George’s Quay, to the right of his mostly reconstructed yet eternally graceful masterpiece of … Read more
This significant and provocative book raises many questions about history-writing in Ireland. It is based on previously published articles by John Regan concerning the Treaty, Michael Collins and Southern nationalism, sectarianism during the Irish revolution and the intellectual influence of Conor Cruise O’Brien. Regan’s contention is that since 1968 Irish historians have laboured under the … Read more
Ruth Musielak, Charlemont’s Marino: portrait of a landscape (OPW, no price given, 80pp, ISBN 9781406428223). Saothar 38: (Irish Labour History Society, ?25, 192pp, ISSN 03321169). Bryan MacMahon, Robert Tressell, Dubliner: (Kilmacud Stillorgan Local History Society, ?10, 112pp, ISBN 9780954986582). Dominic Phelan, Cornelius Ryan: D-Day reporter (Dominic Phelan, no price given, 80pp, ISBN 9781497432543). Tom Reilly, … Read more
Cavan County Museum inhabits a nineteenth-century house that was once home to a gentry family and then a convent. The exhibition area is spread over three floors and a good tip is to take the lift to the top floor and then work your way down. The museum overall, like its building, is stately and … Read more
1972 remains a key year of the ‘Troubles’: the year that witnessed the highest death toll, the most notorious mass killing—‘Bloody Sunday’—and what has by now become the most infamous single killing, the much-publicised ‘disappearing’ of Jean McConville. Bloody Sunday was the culmination of an increasingly aggressive British approach to the crisis in Northern Ireland … Read more