This summer Gorey, County Wexford, will host the first Byrne-Perry Summer School from Friday 30 June to Sunday 2 July. The school, named after the United Irishmen Myles Byrne and Anthony Perry, will focus its attention on the dynamic events of the 1790s which culminated in the rebellion of 1798. The school will be addressed … Read more
Trinity College Library, Dublin, yesterday acquired the first book printed in Irish. This book, Abidil gaoidheilge & caiticiosma (ABC & catechism), printed in 1571, is only the sixth item known to have been printed in Ireland and was purchased for £48,000. Only four copies of the book are recorded and that purchased by TCD was … Read more
A new edition of the Dictionary of National Biography is in preparation at the University of Oxford with general support from the British Academy and Oxford University Press. All entries in the old DNB will be revised or rewritten and 12,000 new articles will be added. It is a particular priority to improve the coverage … Read more
In the early summer of 1795 Russell, Neilson, Simms, McCracken and one or two more of us, on the summit of McArt’s Fort, took a solemn obligation—never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country. Tone, Autobiography. The Society of United Irishmen Commemoration Committee is organising a … Read more
The letters of Irish emigrants in Australia (featured in the ‘sources’ section of HI Winter 1994), steeped in local idiom and nuance, deserve to be heard as well as seen. A ninety-minute cassette, based on a series of radio programmes produced by Cathal Póirtéir, has been released in conjunction with David Fitzpatrick’s Oceans of Consolation: … Read more