Alan Parker’s film version of Frank McCourt’s childhood memoir of his poverty-stricken upbringing in Limerick in the 1930s and ‘40s seems destined to bring Angela’s Ashes to an even wider audience than the phenomenally successful book. Since it was published in 1997, Angela’s Ashes has won the Pulitzer prize, spent over two years at the … Read more
VC: Did your background contribute to your interest in history? MPM: Yes. My father had a deep interest in the history of Ireland and my family had been involved in one way or another in the country’s history since the seventeenth century. We had a very good library and there were historic books all over … Read more
For many years I have had an interest in my father’s large collection of papers. After his retirement from politics in 1961, Prof. Kevin B. Nowlan and I assisted him in putting his large collection of War of Independence, truce, civil war and later personal and political papers in order, and having them transferred to … Read more
Julius Pokorny was a German Celtic scholar who supported Irish nationalism and the Gaelic League. He corresponded with Douglas Hyde, met Éamon de Valera and is mentioned by name in Ulysses. And he was a German nationalist who lost his chair in Berlin because of Jewish ancestry, after which an Irish visa saved his life. … Read more
Early in the twentieth century Sir Hugh Lane indicated that Ireland needed a school of painters prepared to commit themselves to the expression of Irish art, in order to convey a growing sense of national consciousness. This search for a new identity, not solely confined to artists, occurred about the time of the 1916 Easter … Read more