A newly discovered manuscript throws a vivid, uncensored and revealing light on an Ulster Presbyterian community and an otherwise obscure eighteenth-century cultural world. By Andrew Carpenter Although several women living in the southern provinces of eighteenth-century Ireland published poetry in English, remarkably little of the verse written by women from Ulster during this period has … Read more
By Lar Joye The ‘Brown Bess’ musket was the one used by the British Army from 1720 to 1850. There is no agreement on the origin of the name—maybe from the colour, perhaps a corruption of the German word for gun (buche) or simply a soldier’s nickname. It was not a very effective weapon, firing … Read more
The first balloon crossing of the Irish Sea in July 1817. By Mark Davies ‘I am just come from the clouds; I should now wish to visit the deep.’ This was the bravado request of twenty-year-old Windham Sadler, only hours after becoming the first man ever to make an aerial crossing of the Irish Sea, … Read more
‘If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself’ —George Orwell, 1984. By Angus Mitchell This observation in Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece touches on how a critical dynamic of state control requires a shutting out of secrecy entirely as a recognisable function of authority. Perhaps this is the only way in … Read more
Sir,—Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc’s article (HI 25.3, May/June 2017) places emphasis on ‘the geography of IRA executions’ in the War of Independence, but he overlooks the more significant factor of their chronology. May I suggest that if he viewed each of these occurrences against the backdrop of political events nationally he would find that these … Read more