Nestled in the woods on the eastern boundary of the Castletown estate, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, the eighteenth-century gate lodge informally known as the ‘Batty Langley Lodge’ is one of the finest features of this renowned demesne. It was built for Lady Louisa Conolly (1743–1821), wife of Thomas Conolly MP (1738–1803), and was one of the … Read more
Kilcorban Dominican friary is located in east Galway in the diocese of Clonfert. The friary was home to Ireland’s only community of the Dominican Third Order Regular. It appears to have been established as a result of the influence of the Dominican First Order friars of Portumna, less than 10km away. Thomas de Burgo, bishop … Read more
British director Ken Loach is well known for his cinematic accounts of fraught historical moments, dealing with the Spanish and Irish civil wars respectively in Land and freedom (1995) and The wind that shakes the barley (2006). In his latest outing he has turned his gaze to Ireland in the 1930s, a period when post-revolutionary … Read more
Last March (2014) I had to write an essay for my Leaving Cert history class with the given title of ‘What factors from 1912 onward led to the partition of Ireland?’ For this kind of assignment we are required only to regurgitate information from our textbook, Sovereignty and partition by M.E. Collins. I had recently, … Read more
Sir,—Professor Morgan Kelly—famous as the man who predicted the banking collapse and was brushed aside for his pains—recently suggested that the reason for the downward slide in the international ratings of both UCD and TCD was grade inflation, as it is called: more simply expressed as ‘the failure to fail’. But there may also be … Read more