THE LITTLE-KNOWN CORFU CRISIS OF 1923 PROVIDED INEXPERIENCED IRISH DIPLOMATS WITH A BLUNT INTRODUCTION TO POWER POLITICS By Mark Phelan In August 1923, brigands murdered an Italian general and several of his assistant compatriots who were part of an international commission attempting to define the disputed frontier between Albania and Greece. Because the murders occurred … Read more
LABOUR, ENLISTMENT AND DEMOBILISATION IN IRELAND’S FIRST WORLD WAR RAILWAYS By Peter Rigney In the early weeks of the First World War, British railway companies were taken under government control. The companies obtained a commitment that no railwayman would be accepted into the forces without the permission of his employer. Irish companies were not thought … Read more
ALTHOUGH HE NEVER SET FOOT IN IRELAND, HE CONFIDENTLY PROCLAIMED HIS ETHNICITY By Marion R. Casey ‘No, he is not an Irishman. He was born in Ireland; but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse’ —Daniel O’Connell (referring to the duke of Wellington), Mullaghmast, 1843. Long ago O’Connell put his … Read more
BLACK ’47, WHICH COMMENCES SHOOTING SHORTLY, IS NOT THE FIRST FAMINE-THEMED FILM TO BE ENVISAGED By Bryce Evans This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Liam O’Flaherty’s novel Famine, set during Ireland’s Great Hunger (1845–51). O’Flaherty’s literary contemporary Seán O’Faoláin called Famine ‘tremendous’, ‘biblical’, containing ‘a compression of emotion only to be … Read more