Elected to the Senate two years ago for the National University, Professor Joe Lee of University College Cork is probably Ireland’s best known modern historian. Gráinne Henry caught up with him recently. GH: Tell us about your background. JL: I was born in Tralee, County Kerry, in 1942. I spent my first nine years in … Read more
Tony Varley and Peter Moser The absence of a strong tradition of farmer parties in a country with a very substantial proportion of the workforce engaged in agriculture has long been a source of puzzlement to students of twentieth-century Irish politics. Those farmers’ parties that have appeared in independent Ireland have never threatened to … Read more
Jim Blaney The ballad known as McCafferty or McCaffery has long been a favourite. It was said to have been so popular that it was banned in the British army, since it appeared to authorities to be altogether too sympathetic to Private Patrick McCaffery, who had been executed for shooting two of his superior officers. … Read more
Joseph Starr In Europe the eighteenth century was known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. Intellectuals firmly believed that men were perfectible and that having achieved that state an era of harmony, peace and progress would emerge. Armed with these ideas they set out to reform every … Read more
Hiram Morgan The palpable and enduring effect of the Reformation on Irish history should not be allowed to obscure the impact also made by the Renaissance. The rationale behind the Tudor attempt to ‘reform’ the Irish polity and the Gaelic section of its population was provided by humanists variously inspired by classical ideas of … Read more