A chara,—Apropos Conor McCabe’s Platform piece, ‘Where, oh where is the evidence? Greaves, Connolly and the British Army’ (HI 33.3, May/June 2025): quite apart from the controversial question of Connolly’s military service, I was interested to see McCabe draw attention to the fact that Connolly had an older sister, Mary. Readers may be interested to … Read more
BY DONAL FALLON FOCUS THEATRE REMEMBERED In one of his final acts as president, Michael D. Higgins (together with his wife Sabina) unveiled a plaque to honour the Focus Theatre in Pembroke Place, Dublin. The theatre was the true inheritor of the spirit of the earlier Pike Theatre (and only slightly larger) and would bring … Read more
BY AODHÁN CREALEY JANUARY 03/1864 John Hughes (66), archbishop of New York since 1840, died. An immigrant from Annaloghan, near Clogher, Co. Tyrone, Hughes played a key role in fostering the Irish-American identity. At the time of his installation an estimated 20% of the population of New York was Irish, mostly living in wretched conditions … Read more
By Aisling Heffernan A recent sale in Adams Auctioneers, Dublin, featured a painting of Charles Campbell, forever linked to a chance discovery that unveiled one of the nation’s most famous archaeological treasures—the 5,000-year-old Neolithic passage tomb of Newgrange. In 1699 the site was nothing more than an unassuming hill on Campbell’s lands. Seeking materials for … Read more
By Brian Trench When King Charles III went to Rome as supreme governor of the Church of England in October 2025 to meet and pray with Pope Leo XIV, he was continuing the British monarchy’s gradual disentanglement from Reformation and post-Reformation cultural wars. In an earlier phase of that process, an Irish committee made a … Read more