As the Battle of Britain raged across the skies following the capitulation of France in June 1940, the Irish state had not prepared for the possibility of paratroopers, spies and belligerent aircraft crash-landing on its soil By Luke Diver On 20 August 1940, the lack of preparedness of the Irish state was highlighted when a … Read more
The IRA’s Civil War campaign against Dublin’s cinemas and theatres By Gavin Foster A few nights after St Patrick’s Day 1923, two men arrived at the Bohemian Picture House in Phibsborough, a suburb on the north side of Dublin. The Irish Free State was still in the throes of civil war, but social life was … Read more
While many Irishmen were transported to Tasmania, formerly Van Diemen’s Land, either as ordinary criminals or as political offenders during the first half of the nineteenth century, some Irishmen have chosen to settle there. One such was Edmund Dwyer Gray Jr, who rose to be premier of the state of Tasmania for a period of … Read more
The craniology collection in Trinity College, Dublin By Miguel DeArce and René Gapert The journal Nature recently published a colour map of the human brain (opposite page), identifying 100 brain regions with their distinctive functions. This brought to our mind other, older, nineteenth-century ‘phrenological heads’ that can be sourced from antiquarians throughout Europe (opposite page). … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons After 1649 and continuing until 1853, many convicted felons from Ireland were transported overseas to serve their sentences as indentured servants. Initially transportation was to the thirteen colonies in North America, and to a lesser extent to the island colonies in the British Caribbean. By the early eighteenth century the Caribbean ‘sugar … Read more