SEPTEMBER 08/1806 Patrick Cotter (46), giant, died. Born in Kinsale, Co. Cork, Cotter was just eighteen when he began exhibiting himself in England as Patrick Cotter O’Brien, ‘a lineal descendant of the old puissant King Brien Boreau’. It was recorded that Cotter ‘had less imbecility of mind than the generality of overgrown persons’ but also … Read more
By Dianne McPhelim The Revd and Mrs Cassandra Hand arrived in the small country town of Clones, Co. Monaghan, in October 1847, bringing with them a family of seven children and memories of a comfortable life in England. Born in 1809, the ninth child of the Molyneux family, Cassandra had enjoyed a privileged upbringing in … Read more
This September marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War—or the ‘Emergency’, as it was officially described here with heroic understatement—and in this issue John Gibney and Michael Kennedy outline the genesis of independent Ireland’s policy of neutrality (pp 48–51). That inevitably raises the question of whether it was the correct, … Read more