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
At the top of Dublin’s Grafton Street, at the corner of Stephen’s Green, stands a handsome triumphal arch—still referred to by some locals as ‘traitors’ gate’—which commemorates the ‘officers, non-commissioned officers and men’ of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who fell in the second Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902). One will search Ireland in vain to find a … Read more
The reappraisals that occurred during the centenary of the death of William Morris (1834-96) further confirmed him as one of the outstanding figures of nineteenth-century Britain. A multi-talented individual he achieved prominence in the arts as a poet, novelist, designer, printer, stained-glass artist, weaver, dyer and, to a rather lesser degree, as a painter. He … Read more
I have a vast heap of trouble on my hands as I must be very soon preparing no small number of the Newfoundland Regiment for death. Those villains who formed a plot to take and plunder the town, were strictly bound together with the infamous link of the United Irishmen’s Oath, and are supposed to … Read more
Feagh M’Hugh of the mountain— Feagh M’Hugh of the glen— Who has not heard of the Glenmalur Chief, And the feats of his hard-riding men? When these lines by Thomas D’Arcy McGee were published in The Nation in 1854, one wonders if indeed any of its readers had heard much about the feats of the … Read more