Readers of Joseph Robins’ Lost Children will be familiar with the story of Irish female orphan adolescents who were sent from the workhouses of Ireland to the Australian colonies at the time of the Great Famine. Between 1848 and 1850 over 4,000 young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty arrived in Sydney, Melbourne … Read more
The battle of the Boyne was a curious affair. It has generated more potent myths than any other armed encounter in Ireland and has been ridiculously overplayed for partisan purposes. But, in truth, it was no great feat for 36,000 well-trained troops with up to forty field pieces to oust 25,000 who had only six … Read more
Archaeological sites and artefacts represent the only available sources for the pre-Celtic tradition of Ireland, and interpretation of these is a complex and generally risky task. It is generally held that the origins of the Celtic culture in the country lie in or about the fifth century BC, and the nature and import of our … Read more
In 1924, the Caledonian Society of Calcutta honoured one of the most prominent local servants of the British Raj, Charles Augustus Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta. Tegart, later acclaimed as the most famous policeman of British India, was already a hero to the local Anglo-Indian community and a hated villain to Bengali revolutionary … Read more
The Catholic Church through the Ages Religion in its spiritual, sectarian and devotional aspects has been of huge importance in Ireland’s history. In recent centuries the Catholic church has been one of the most dynamic and yet also one of the most conservative institutions in the country, wielding immense influence over not only its own … Read more