Sir,—Sylvia Kleinman is right to deplore the narrow cynicism and rehashed stereotypes that characterise the rare mentions of the French Revolution on RTÉ (HI 28.2, March/April 2020, Platform). Kleinman exposes the factual errors and spin that reduce this transformative decade in history to the ‘excesses of the Revolution’ and a James Gillray-style caricature of simian … Read more
BRENDAN SCOTT (ed.) Four Courts Press €50 ISBN 9781846827358 Reviewed by David Heffernan David Heffernan is a historian of Tudor and early Stuart Ireland. The role of the towns in the Ulster Plantation initiated around 1609 by the government of James I has always been central to the broader historiography of the plantation during the … Read more
By Joseph E.A. Connell The Irish Bulletin, a Dublin newspaper edited by Desmond FitzGerald, was one of the most effective propaganda arms for the IRA/Volunteers during the War of Independence. It was published daily from 11 November 1919 until the Truce. On 19 June 1920, it reported the words of Lt. Col. Gerald Brice Ferguson … Read more
By Joe Buckley An Post’s stamp commemorating Ireland’s War of Independence features Seán Keating’s Men of the South. The original work hangs in the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. Keating painted two associated sketches, both featuring Seán Moylan, leader of the North Cork flying column: one entitled 1921—An I.R.A. Column, which hangs in Áras an Uachtaráin, … Read more
BY AODHÁN CREALEY MAY 19/1935 T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was … Read more