DS: How do you come to have such an interesting name as de Courcy Ireland? JDCI: I don’t actually know the full story. The de Courcys were, of course, a historic crowd who came here in 1172 from a place in Normandy called Courcy. The name Courcy is very common in Normandy, and now in … Read more
A terse paragraph in the Irish national dailies on 3 May 1945 started the avalanche of international protest. Under the heading ‘People and Places’, the Fianna Fáil-backed Irish Press reported laconically that the Taoiseach and Minister for External Affairs, Éamon de Valera, accompanied by the Secretary of External Affairs, Joseph Walshe, ‘called on Dr Hempel, … Read more
On 29 October 1940, Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig made his last major speech in parliament—a typically impassioned tub-thumping assault on a Nationalist motion supporting Irish unity. By 24 November, he had died peacefully at his home. After taking private soundings the Governor, Lord Abercorn, asked John Andrews, the Minister of Finance, to … Read more
The death of Frank Ryan in Loschwitz Sanatorium outside Dresden in June 1944 three months before his forty-second birthday, brought an end to a life which spanned four wars and read like a film script. Born near Knocklong, County Limerick, he joined Fianna Éireann while still a schoolboy and saw active service in the War … Read more
Sean Keating was one of the more significant painters in the formative years of the Irish Free State. He was born in Limerick in 1889, where he enrolled in the Technical School to study art, moving subsequently to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where he became a student of William Orpen. Keating’s work initially … Read more