Sir,—Perhaps it will be beneficial to add the following to Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh’s excellent ‘“Years of storm and charm”—W.P. Ryan and the Irish Nation’ in the last issue (HI 31.4, July/August 2023). London’s Daily Herald, of which Ryan became its ‘first staffer’, had been launched with donations, including £300 from G. Bernard Shaw, himself a … Read more
Sir,—Fiona Fitzsimons in the last issue’s ‘Kindred Lines’ (HI 31.4, July/August 2003) omitted to mention that the Palatines also settled on the Ram estate at Old Ross, Co. Wexford, where names such as Jekyll, Rapple, Rhynehart, Hornick, Hess, Poole, Green and Hartrick are still to be found scattered across many townlands in the region.—Yours etc., … Read more
Sir,—In his review in the last issue (HI 31.4, July/August 2023) Gerard O’Sullivan says that John T. McGreevy’s Catholicism: a global history from the French Revolution to Pope Francis ‘opens with the guillotining of the Catholic [my emphasis] king of France, Louis XVI, in 1793’. This is yet again another gross distortion of what too … Read more
Sir,—Kanturk courthouse complex has an important and indeed unique place in the architectural heritage of County Cork. It was built in 1824–6 to the designs of the prominent English architects James and George Richard Pain. At the time County Cork had high levels of rural unrest and violence, so the Grand Jury decided to build … Read more
Sir,—I am currently undertaking research for a forthcoming book, 1928: A coinage for Ireland. It focuses on the Irish Free State coinage and will have a similar format to my book When Britain went decimal: the coinage of 1971 (Royal Mint/Spink, 2021). History Ireland has published two related articles: my ‘The coin that never was—the … Read more