Sir,—Emily Cullen’s interesting article (HI 24.6, Nov./Dec. 2016) brings three things to mind. Readers may not be aware that the green flag with the gold harp is in continuous use today. It is the ‘jack’ flown by Irish naval ships when moored or at anchor, or on special occasions under way when ‘dressed overall’. At … Read more
Owing to a spellcheck error in Teresa Breathneach’s ‘Greeting the nation—the Irish Christmas card’ (HI 24.1, Nov./Dec. 2016, p. 37, first column, line 25), ‘Confederate Club’ should have read ‘Contemporary Club’.
Sir,—Eoin Gill’s ‘Platform’ piece on science and Irish history (HI 24.5, Sept./Oct. 2016) raises very interesting questions. I agree with him that writers such as Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett are better known than scientists such as Boyle, Tyndall, Hamilton, Boole and so on. In the case of George Boole, however, the many commemorations, … Read more
Sir,—I am looking for good-quality photographs of the victims of revolutionary violence in County Cork between 1916 and 1923. My forthcoming book (Mercier Press) has identified more than 700 victims during this period. Each victim has been identified and a short description of what happened to them is included. While I have gathered more than … Read more
Sir,—Michael Moroney’s otherwise interesting piece on the last pre-Famine census (‘The 1841 census—do the numbers add up?’, HI 23.3, May/June 2015) unwittingly perpetuates a couple of common misunderstandings of key contemporary passages. The author is of course not the first to question the accuracy of the 1841 return. The census commissioners were themselves struck by … Read more