BY DONAL FALLON AGAINST THE IMAGE Many column inches have been given over to the colourisation of historical images. To some they represent a positive engagement with the past, while others maintain that they are a distortion of historical sources. A new exhibition at the Ulster Museum reminds us that there are other ways in … Read more
Last year the National Archives’ Commemoration Programme marked significant events of 1921, culminating in the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. A major exhibition, ‘The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives’, was previewed in the British Academy in London on 11 October and opened in Dublin Castle on 6 December 2021. Planning for the exhibition began … Read more
BY AODHÁN CREALEY JULY 15/1984 Glenveagh National Park in north-west Donegal, covering 40,000 acres, was formally opened by President Patrick Hillery. The estate was created (1857–9) by businessman John George Adair, who also built Glenveagh Castle (1870) and is remembered today for the Derryveagh evictions (1861), when he ejected 244 of his tenants. Adair died … Read more
‘History … is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake’ is one of the more familiar metaphors from Joyce’s Ulysses. But what exactly did Joyce mean? One line of interpretation claims that ‘History’ is incapable of delivering either justice or enlightenment. It is a narrative that is violent, chaotic and perpetually oppressive. With … Read more
By the end of August 1922, the ‘conventional’ phase of the Civil War was over. Dublin and the country’s major towns were firmly in the hands of the Provisional Government’s ‘National Army’ (as it was now referred to in the mainstream press). Amphibious landings along the south and west coasts outflanked the short-lived anti-Treaty ‘Munster … Read more