Francis Devine (ed.) (Four Courts Press, €24.95) ISBN 9781907002106 The centenary of the Lockout has generated a new interest in the period that goes beyond just historians and trade union activists. With James Plunkett’s remarkable novel Strumpet city on the lips and minds of many Dubliners thanks to the ‘One City, One Book’ campaign, there … Read more
Tourists are often invited, like Doubting Thomas, to thrust their fingers into the bullet holes that mark the sides of the General Post Office. Few visitors to the National Archives pause to run their hands along the words etched into the granite of the wall that runs along Bishop Street. Yet the history of Jacob’s … Read more
The Treaty of Trianon, signed on 4 June 1920 between the ‘Principal Allied and Associated Powers’ and Hungary, was part of the far-reaching arrangements agreed upon at the Paris Peace Conference for the breaking up of the Habsburg empire after its defeat alongside imperial Germany in the First World War. It followed the Treaty of … Read more
On 25 November 1913, at the Rotunda Rink in Dublin, the Irish Volunteers were formed, with 3,000 men enrolling that evening. For the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) there is no such simple foundation story. Ronald McNeill, a Unionist MP who appeared on many platforms with Sir Edward Carson and was the first historian of the … Read more
In 1834 a new experiment in tobacco-growing was established by Sir Nugent Everard at Randalstown, Co. Meath. Such was the dedication of Everard to this experiment that he sent his son to America for several years to ‘learn the business’. In seeking approval for such cultivation, Everard had enlisted the support of such men as … Read more