It’s a Long Way to Tipperary—An Irish Story of the Great War follows the daily lives of a single family from July 1914 to December 1918 through weekly posts of diary extracts, letters, photographs and other wartime memorabilia. The posts are based on documents accumulated by the Armstrong family of Moyaliffe Castle, Co. Tipperary. This … Read more
The triumph of the Young Turk Revolution of 24 July 1908 was sudden, unexpected, always patchy, and never complete in the way revolutions are meant to be. Only after five years did the Committee of Union and Progress definitively move to fully consummate its power. The over-arching aim of the Young Turks was to find … Read more
‘Bullet-throwing’, as it was almost universally called in Belfast, involved the throwing of an iron ball weighing 28 ounces along a course of two to three miles. A match or ‘score’ was most often contested by single players, but doubles matches also occurred. The winner or winners were those who completed the course with the … Read more
One of the consequences of the Crimean War (1854–6) was the abolition by parliament of access to military commissions by privilege and its replacement by public examinations, particularly for the more technical branches, artillery and engineers. The new system was also adopted by the Indian Civil Service (ICS). The change required an educational revolution at … Read more
‘Informer! A horror to be understood fully only by the Irish mind . . . Good God! An informer is the great danger’. (Liam O’Flaherty, The Informer) Probably one of the most notorious informers in Irish history was Leonard MacNally, and he is unusual in that his role was not exposed during his life and … Read more