Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast Creativecentenaries.org By Tony Canavan The Ulster Museum is to be congratulated for its imaginative approach to 1916. With so many commemorative exhibitions, it is difficult to find a new way to approach the centenary. This exhibition is part of a larger initiative in Northern Ireland promoting a creative response to … Read more
Cyprus Avenue/Fine Points Films, directed by Brendan J. Byrne By Breandán Mac Suibhne At the time of the Hunger Strikes, one issue animating Irish critics was the relationship between fiction and history. Translations (1980)—Brian Friel’s play about language and politics, loss, learning and betrayal—had, some argued, distorted history. Set in Donegal in 1833, the play … Read more
Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 6 August–24 September 2016 By Eamon O’Flaherty The most common question posed when deciding whether a work of art can be called a classic is whether it can survive the tendency of most things to decline with age and the passage of time. Even history, which through rhetoric can claim to be … Read more
Gambit Pictures, RTÉ1, 25 August 2016 Bob Jackson, A doctor’s sword: how an Irish doctor survived war, captivity and the atomic bomb (Collins Press, €22.99 hb, 304pp, ISBN 9781848892866) By John Gibney A doctor’s sword begins, naturally enough, with the eponymous sword of the title: a Japanese katana (usually, if incorrectly, dubbed a ‘samurai’ sword) … Read more
Convert Rolls 1703–1845 and Catholic Qualification Rolls 1774–1845 By Fiona Fitzsimons The Catholic Convert and Qualification Rolls were recently released on-line. The society portrayed in these records is much more diverse than was previously supposed. It’s also more pluralist, if we compare the Convert Rolls with the surviving RC parish records on-line. The procedure for … Read more