By Fran O’Rourke The Battle of Biscay, on 28 December 1943, was a significant episode in the Second World War. Two British cruisers, HMS Enterprise and HMS Glasgow, sank two German torpedo boats and a destroyer which were in the area to escort a supply ship through the British blockade. Germany subsequently changed its strategy … Read more
A common thread in this issue is that ‘identity’ in Ireland over the past two centuries or so has not been immutable (‘two traditions’, ‘Ireland for the Irish’ etc.). In his article on William Sharman Crawford (pp 20–2) Peter Gray reminds us that political radicalism in Protestant Ulster did not entirely disappear in the nineteenth … Read more
By Brian Girvin In his lifetime Owen Sheehy Skeffington (1909–70) was a remarkable figure. Though little known today, he was at the forefront of establishing liberalism as a major force in Ireland between the 1940s and the 1960s. This was an extremely conservative period in Irish life, but Sheehy Skeffington questioned and challenged Church and … Read more
By John Mulqueen In May 1945 many in German uniforms who fought to the end in Berlin were not German: Estonian, French, Latvian and Scandinavian Waffen-SS soldiers tried in vain to halt the Red Army juggernaut. The smallest section in the military wing of the SS, the British Free Corps, also played a role. There … Read more
By Martin Tyrrell The writer Máirín Mitchell (1895–1986) is remembered, if at all, for her 1937 book Storm over Spain. It was one of the scores of books published during the Spanish Civil War, when public interest in that country was at an understandable high. In the event, the book was a commercial failure, never … Read more