The 1917 Sinn Féin Convention was a crucial watershed in the Irish struggle for national independence. It was the culmination of a process of reorganisation that had begun almost as soon as the quicklime had settled upon the bodies of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising. For a significant group of Irish women, many … Read more
The forthcoming beatification of Edmund Rice will inevitably focus attention on his life and deeds. Yet, the absence of a diary, memoirs or a contemporary biographer restrict our image of the man’s personality to mere glimpses. Above all, his modesty and reticence make him an elusive subject for a biographer. His contemporaries, for instance, appear … Read more
Few events in modern Irish history, especially in the history of revolutionary nationalism, haunt the imagination like the massacre that took place in the townland of Scullabogue in southern County Wexford on 5 June 1798. The killing of well over a hundred government supporters by rebels has been immortalised in the illustration that George Cruickshank … Read more
After his defeat in the 1828 presidential election John Quincy Adams was faced with a crisis of self-confidence which, in an unusual move for an ex-President of the United States, he met by re-entering political life as a congressman and by reconfirming his own moral and ethical stance as an Adams through the medium of … Read more
It is curious that the career and achievements of Archbishop Narcissus Marsh (1638-1715) have received little attention from modern historians. One explanation may be the dismissive views of William King (1650-1729), the powerful Archbishop of Dublin, who said Marsh was ‘very dextrous at doing nothing’ or even more likely Jonathan Swift’s spiteful ‘Character of Primate … Read more