By Isadore Ryan Margaret Flanagan, known as Agnes, was born in Birr army barracks on 16 May 1909. Her father, Augustine Flanagan, a private in the Leinster Fusiliers, died from tuberculosis six years later, aged 42. Her mother Kate (or Catherine, née Parsons), considerably younger than Augustine, was still living on Military Road in Birr … Read more
By Michael Kennedy In December 1922 the Irish Free State came into being. Within months it had applied to join the League of Nations, the multilateral organisation created by the post-war Paris peace conference in April 1919 to oversee international security and disarmament. The idea of the League of Nations arose from US and British … Read more
By Colum Kenny There is an ironic twist to the circumstances of the birth of Éamon de Valera, then named ‘George de Valero’, in a Protestant charitable institution. Given that he is the politician who dominated the evolution of the Irish nation state in the twentieth century—with its paraphernalia of Magdalene laundries, mother-and-baby homes and … Read more
The maps used by the British Army from 1969. By Arnold Horner When the Northern Ireland Troubles erupted in the late 1960s, modern methods of identifying location using GPS (Global Positioning Systems) and of electronic surveillance from drones were still largely glints in the eyes of senior superpower intelligence personnel. Much less sophisticated, and less … Read more
By Conor Carley WHY I PICKED THIS TOPIC I picked this topic because I love reading about the War of Independence. Even more interesting to me is the fact that a relative, James O’Donoghue, fought and died in that war. The O’Neill side of my family have always lived in Bandon. My grandfather, Brendan, owned … Read more