On St Patrick’s Day 2001, Bob McLean delivered a lecture in Edinburgh’s City Art Centre on Daniel O’Connell. It accompanied an exhibition of paintings belonging to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBOS), including a magnificent portrait of the Liberator. With the painting as an imposing backdrop, the lecture detailed for a Scottish audience O’Connell’s significance … Read more
RTÉ has made a documentary, The Battle of Kinsale, as its contribution of this year’s 400th commemoration of that event. History Ireland solicited the views of the programme makers. Peter Mulryan, producer/director Of course I’d heard of the battle of Kinsale, but exactly what happened at Kinsale was a mystery to me. Seventeenth-century Irish history … Read more
The historic links between Spain and Ireland are intellectual, economic, political, religious and especially military. However there are no racial or genetic links. The Gaelic Irish we can categorically state do not have Spanish origins. When the Lebor Gabála Érenn—the Book of Invasions—was composed as an integrative myth for the peoples of Ireland with the … Read more
Why do the Blueshirts exercise such a fascination for us? Perhaps because they seem to make sense of Irish history in the 1930s by offering a parallel with the rest of Europe. Irish historians have always been more circumspect about the meaning of Blueshirtism. F.S.L. Lyons, in an optimistic mood, saw the Blueshirt movement as … Read more
Clive Scoular’s James Chichester-Clark, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was launched on 12 December 2000 in Belfast’s recently refurbished Linen Hall Library. The author spoke of his pleasure at writing and publishing this first biography and of his gratitude to Lord Moyola (Major Chichester-Clark) and his family for their co-operation. In response Paul Bew (Queen’s, … Read more