There is much talk these days of a ‘decade of centenaries’, but this renewed emphasis on impending commemoration shouldn’t obscure those commemorations that are already established. At this time of year one looms large: Armistice Day, 11 November. To mark it, the Dublin photographer David O’Flynn has compiled a collection of his photographs, available to … Read more
Sir,—I wish success to the organisers of the monumental project to record all those from Ireland who survived the Great War (Sidelines, HI 20.3, May/June 2012). For readers who are interested, details of over 1,400 Great War survivors who at enlistment in the various branches of armed forces declared that they were born in County … Read more
Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) was a provincial German-speaking Baltic port and former member of the Hanseatic League that found itself plucked from obscurity immediately after the First World War. Elevated to the ambiguous status of a League-of-Nations-administered ‘free city’ and lying outside the borders of both Poland and Germany, the Free City of Danzig was, … Read more
Sir, —I am currently undertaking research for a Ph.D at Queen’sUniversity, Belfast, on the 10th (Irish) Division in the Great War.Drawing its recruits from all sectors of the Irish population, northand south, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, and from every one ofthe four provinces, the division was the first and least well known ofthe three divisions … Read more
As the First World War was entering its final stages, a pandemic of unprecedented virulence, which we now know to be the H1N1 influenza virus, infected one billion people around the globe and may have killed approximately 100 million. It spread with remarkable speed, striking in three almost simultaneous waves in various parts of the … Read more