Irish units facing the 1918 German spring offensive. By Mark Phelan By early 1918, after more than three years of bloody stalemate, the strategic situation on the Western Front was delicately poised. While both sides suffered the effects of war-weariness, Germany in particular struggled against low morale, as a combination of poor harvests and British … Read more
Was this simply a case of a tourist snapping up collectables with a celebrity appeal, or does the episode reveal a deeper sympathy for the Jacobite cause? By Estelle Gittins The Library of Trinity College, Dublin, holds two fascinating and little-known manuscripts bought by a nineteenth-century Irish tourist in Rome—a volume of the private devotions … Read more
Seán Duffy talked to Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Irish History at University College Cork, shortly before his death on 25 October 2017. SD: Tell me about your family background and early years. DÓC: Well, I’m from Killorglin, Co. Kerry, from a farming background—a family that had a sideline in clerics and teachers and … Read more
Comparing Irish nationalism and Zionism. By Aidan Beatty In one of the most memorable scenes of Myles na gCopaleen’s classic 1941 satire An Béal Bocht, the erstwhile narrator, Bónapárt Ó Cúnasa, recounts the arrival of a group of festive Gaelic League day-trippers in his imaginary village of Corca Dorca. Ó Cúnasa describes an odd practice … Read more