By Cora Crampton ‘Whenever the Irish past is invoked, we must ask ourselves not only by which groups and to what end, but also against whom?’ (Ian McBride) The people of Leinster travelled in their many thousands to the rath of Mullaghmast in south Kildare, close to the village of Ballitore, on 1 October 1843 … Read more
Following on from Trinity College Dublin’s Legacies of Slavery Project, Rachael Scally investigates the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and its links to slavery and empire. By Rachael Scally Work is ongoing but, to date, research has established that 23 of the Royal Dublin Society’s members and alumni had owned between them 2,260 enslaved people—approximately the … Read more
By Patrick Wadden Ian Stewart’s magnificent recent book, The Celts: a modern history, and Mark Williams’s perceptive review (HI 33.6, Nov./Dec. 2025) have brought questions about Ireland’s Celtic identity back into focus. The tendency to label as ‘Celtic’ everything associated with early Ireland—and assorted modern phenomena that wish to associate themselves with Ireland’s distant past … Read more
By Maurice Hartigan In States of Ireland (1972), Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Labour Party’s spokesman on Northern Ireland, wrote ‘let us have a truce on commemoration until we can find something which Irishmen of both the main political and religious groupings can commemorate in peace’. Within a year he was minister for posts and telegraphs … Read more