One of the most intriguing episodes in the history of Anglo-Irish relations is the British proposal in June 1940 to end partition in return for Ireland’s participation in the war against Germany. The British ‘offer’ was made during the course of discussions between de Valera and Malcolm MacDonald, the former dominions secretary. According to Robert … Read more
HM: Was your upbringing distinctively Irish? TK: Yes, an Irish Catholic one. It began roughly three hundred miles up the coast from Sydney in a town called Kempsey. Kempsey was marked by distinction between white and Aboriginal but there were also religious distinctions within the white community. The Catholics were not exclusively Irish as there … Read more
Foras Feasa ar Éirinn is a history of the kingdom of Ireland, written by Geoffrey Keating, an Old English Catholic priest from south County Tipperary, and completed in about 1634. It tells the story of Ireland from the creation of the world to the coming of the Normans. The original version was written in Irish, … Read more
The story begins in 1935, when by the Montreal Agreement, the governments of the USA, the UK, Canada and the Irish Free State ruled that all transatlantic aircraft would land at an Irish airport when travelling east or west. Foynes is today, as it was then, a small town on the south side of the … Read more
Isn’t it ironic that the conquistadors of Spain, who first brought the potato to the attention of those outside the Americas, were relatively indifferent to the vegetative gold that they stumbled upon in the 1530s? They rode over the tubers, in pursuit of the Inca leader Atahualpa and his fabled riches. Little did they realise … Read more