EM: Tell us about your background. DBQ: My mother was from Cork and my father from Tyrone. I was born in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin in 1909, but until I was fourteen we lived in Clara, County Offaly, where I attended the local Protestant primary school. My father was a head gardener and, when he … Read more
In October 1996 the foundations of what is thought to have been the thirteenth-century Augustinian priory of St Mary were located during building work for a new shopping-centre at Mullingar, County Westmeath. During the archaeological rescue excavation under the direction of Michael Gibbons, more than thirty burials were discovered, two of which contained scallop shells, … Read more
The collection known as the ‘Rebellion Papers’ in the National Archives, Dublin, has been described as ‘the largest single source for the study of the 1790s’. The material ranges from the early 1790s to 1808, a period which witnessed developments that were to shape modern Ireland: the spread from revolutionary France of republicanism as a … Read more
TG: In the acknowledgements to Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence (1989) you state that your interest in Tone goes back to childhood and traditions transmitted by your parents. Could you explain? ME: I grew up with the United Irishmen. My childhood was spent in the shadow of McArt’s Fort. My father was steeped in … Read more
Launching the Irish government’s 1798 commemorations earlier this year, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, declared: ‘we are commemorating the most sustained effort in Irish history to reconcile and unite what were the three communities with different religious beliefs and ethnic backgrounds—Protestants, Catholics and Dissenters’. He spoke on behalf of ‘a sovereign Irish government’, that, he claimed, … Read more