Ireland is shaped like a pancake if a 1468 map is to be believed. Drawn by Italian cartographer Grazioso Benincasa, it has 57 identifiable modern place-names, such as Porto Rosso (Portrush), Drogda (Drogheda) and Bre (Bray), along with some rivers and offshore islands. Benincasa did not draw the map based on his own survey but … Read more
January 8 Thur 8pm Mount Merrion Historical Society, Community Centre, North Avenue. Monkstown–Dún Laoghaire, Tom Conlon. Adm. ?4/?2 student. 9 Fri 8pm Military History Society of Ireland, Griffith College, South Circular Road. Who became an officer? Irish recruitment to the British armed forces, 1922–49, Stephen O’Connor. 13 Tues 7pm Tallaght Historical Society, County Library. The … Read more
In the early twentieth century, the newspapers they read defined Irish people. The Anglo-Irish establishment read the Irish Unionist Irish Times. When the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) split over Parnell’s relationship with Katherine O’Shea, the paper’s readership split as well. While the Freeman’s Journal went with the majority in opposing Parnell, a minority moved to … Read more
ANDREW SANDERS Edinburgh University Press €14.25 ISBN 9780748641123 Despite a title with a very contemporary resonance, Andrew Sanders’s book is actually a history of Irish republicanism from the 1960s to the present, with an introductory chapter beginning in 1916. Thus the title of the book seems somewhat controversial in appearing to deny legitimacy to all … Read more
DONAL FALLON New Island €14.99 ISBN 9781848403260 When the Berlin Wall was attacked and conquered by an agitated mob in 1989, it was followed quickly by the tearing down of statues of the old regimes in Eastern Europe. More recently, in 2003 the world witnessed the attack on the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad; … Read more