Sir,—With the centenary of the 1916 Rising due in April 2016 and less than three months later that of the Battle of the Somme, now is the time to decide on a respectful and appropriate remembrance. Both battles were a wellspring of heroic sacrifice and both went on to have a formative influence on Ireland … Read more
Sir,—Jim Smyth’s article on Brendan Behan’s MI5 file (HI 22.6, Nov./Dec. 2014) suggests that Brendan, from an early age, had anti-Nazi and pro-USSR sentiments that he retained through the frostiest times of the Cold War. My father Paddy and his brothers Eddie and Michael Whelan were incarcerated in the Curragh internment camp with Brendan in … Read more
Sir,—In his article on John Adair (HI 22.6, Nov./Dec. 2014), Raymond Blair rightly draws attention to the value of the Maquay diaries in the British Institute of Florence. But do they really support the thesis that William Maquay was actually Adair’s child? In October 1843, when Adair arrived in Florence, aged 20, to stay with … Read more
Sir,—I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that after years of neglect the Kilmichael site has been vandalised through public funds. Padraig Óg Ó Ruairc (HI 22.6, Nov./Dec. 2014, Platform) rightly points out that this is a potential fate for other sites relating to the period 1916–23. He is, however, incorrect in citing the … Read more
Recent public critiques of the Irish revolutionary tradition have been recurring rather than new, and have always been bound up with questions of how Irish history ‘ought’ to be remembered. Works such as John Regan’s recent Myth and the Irish state (2014) have shed new light on Ireland’s ‘history wars’ since the outbreak of the … Read more