By Thomas O’Loughlin On 9 September there fell the centenary of Tom Kettle’s death at Ginchy ‘on the Somme’. Kettle was, among other things, a poet, a lawyer, a member of parliament and an academic: just the sort of person that any new state needs to provide management and leadership. Then we think again of … Read more
Sir,—D.R. O’Connor Lysaght writes (HI 24.4, July/August 2016) that my ‘interesting article’ on Arthur Griffith and Jews ‘is marred by an implicit assumption that because its subject supported Zionism he could not have been an anti-Semite’. The problem with ‘implicit assumptions’ is that they are in the eye of the beholder. In fact I assume … Read more
BY TONY CANAVAN Time lost With all the attention on the centenaries of the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme, some other centenaries of Irish interest have been overlooked. For example, 100 years ago Ireland abandoned Dublin Mean Time and adopted Greenwich Mean Time. It seems that the British government decided to use … Read more
Sir,—Paul Duffy’s interesting article on Hugh II de Lacy and the Albigensian Crusade (HI 24.5, Sept./Oct.) makes no mention of the central fact of that event which, like the ‘crusades’ to Jerusalem, involved the slaughter or burning of thousands of men, women and children. I would also query the use of the word ‘heresy’ without … Read more
Sir,—A coda, if I may, to my article ‘Roger Casement and the History Question’ (HI 24.4, July/August 2016) that responds to the letters in the following issue. When working as a historical consultant for the exhibition at Kerry County Museum, ‘Casement in Kerry: A Revolutionary Journey’, I supported the idea of the curator, Helen O’Carroll, … Read more