Irish Film Institute, https://ifiplayer.ie/independencefilms/ By John Gibney Amongst the most famed instalments in Ireland’s cinematic history are George Morrison’s classic documentaries Mise Éire (1959) and its de facto sequel Saoirse? (1961), both produced by Gael Linn and adorned with equally classic soundtracks by Seán Ó Riada. The former explored the independence movement up to … Read more
NMI Country Life, Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co. Mayo www.museum.ie, www.nationaltreasures.ie By Tony Canavan I have to admit that I was expecting a lot from this exhibition. It is based on four RTÉ programmes from the four provinces in which thousands of ordinary people brought their ‘treasures’ along for consideration. The resulting exhibition in the National … Read more
By Joe Culley (Twitter: @TheRealCulls) In the 1930s Ernie O’Malley began conducting interviews with some of his former comrades from his revolutionary days. Initially the interviews were informal and were designed to help him prepare his memoirs. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, O’Malley intensified his research, travelling the country as a sort … Read more
GERARD FARRELL Palgrave Macmillan €96 ISBN 9783319593623 Reviewed by James O’Neill James O’Neill is an independent heritage consultant based in Belfast. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, or maybe it’s the recent 400th anniversary of the start of the Ulster plantation, but there has been a recent influx of monographs and edited volumes examining that pivotal yet … Read more
BREANDÁN MAC SUIBHNE Oxford University Press £20 ISBN 9780198738619 Reviewed by Emily Mark-FitzGerald Emily Mark-FitzGerald is Associate Professor of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin. In Ways of seeing (1972), John Berger wrote of how ‘capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as … Read more