The Gallery, Farmleigh House, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8 www.phoenixpark.ie By Tony Canavan Residents of Dublin tend to take Phoenix Park for granted, never questioning its origins or why this prime piece of real estate has remained in public hands. Many would be surprised to learn that it started life as a royal deer-park for Charles … Read more
Flights of angels Would You Believe? RTÉ1, 26 November 2016 Directed by Seán Ó Mealóid By Tom Lodge Images of the world’s first televised famine were broadcast on RTÉ during 1969. An hour-long documentary, Night flight to Uli (reviewed in HI 16.5, Sept./Oct. 2008), prompted the surge of public support that sustained Joint Church Aid, … Read more
The 150th anniversary of the founding of Alexandra College, Dublin’s well-known school for girls, is being celebrated this year, and to mark the occasion the College, along with Lilliput Press, has released Pioneering Alexandrans, detailed biographical entries charting the lives and accomplishments of 77 Alexandrans, edited by Ronan Fanning. Whilst the book naturally pays tribute … Read more
JANUARY 01/1909 Claimants to the state pension under the terms of the Old Age Pensions Act (1908) received their first payments at post offices throughout the country. Charged with awarding pensions to men and women aged 70 or over, the Local Government Board (1872) had to contend with the fact that the statutory registration of … Read more
W.J. McCORMACK Michigan State University Press $29.95 ISBN 9781611861914 Reviewed by: Eoin Dillon After reading W.J. (Bill) McCormack’s account of intellectual life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and Britain, the 1916 Rising in Ireland and the role of the Plunkett family, particularly that of George Noble Plunkett and his better-known son, Joseph, military planner of … Read more