Gerard Moran and Nollaig Ó Muraíle (eds), Mayo history and society (Geography Publications, €60 hb, 920pp, ISBN 9780906602683). Jonathon Cherry and Brendan Scott (eds), Cavan history and society (Geography Publications, €60 hb, 920pp, ISBN 9780906602683). Brian Barton, The Belfast Blitz: the city in the war years (Ulster Historical Foundation, £19.99 pb, 656pp, ISBN 9781909556324). Mark … Read more
Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was born in 1831 near Rosscarbery, Co. Cork, and in 1856 he formed the Phoenix National Literary Society in Skibbereen. This was a secret society whose aim was Irish independence from Britain. In 1858 he was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In December 1858 Rossa was arrested and jailed without trial … Read more
Digitisation has transformed how we practise family history. There are over 120 million Irish historical records on-line. It is now possible to trace and document Irish families to a much earlier date. This has led to renewed interest in early modern records, 1500–1700. One series of particular interest and use to family historians are the … Read more
Since the middle of the nineteenth century there have been two universities in Dublin—Trinity College and the Catholic (later, from 1908, National) University—and so it is not surprising that a rivalry developed between them. In Dublin on 11 November 1919 the first anniversary of the Armistice was widely commemorated. Trinity students gathered outside the gates … Read more
Writing in the 1960s, F.S.L. Lyons compared the unionist reaction to the establishment of the Irish Free State to the dog in the night in the Sherlock Holmes story, its significance being that it didn’t bark. ‘Broadly speaking,’ Lyons concludes, ‘one may say of the ex-unionist or loyalist minority that the most important thing about … Read more