In 1917 the British Ministry of Information commissioned several well-known British artists to produce a series of images on different aspects of the First World War. The aim was to encourage a war-weary public and to raise support for the war effort. The images illustrate some of the changing attitudes at the time, such as … Read more
Sir,—The recent letter regarding James Byrne (HI 21.5, Sept./Oct. 2013) prompted me to write concerning Frank Moss, another forgotten figure of 1913, who was the ITGWU organiser for the Swords district farm labourers. Throughout September and October 1913, the Swords farm labourers, under Moss’s leadership, engaged in violent clashes with police in Swords and took … Read more
Errol got all the fame, but his father, Theodore Flynn, a respected academic, deserves recognition too. So think Tony and Vicki Harrison, Australian writers who have penned a biography of Prof. Flynn, father of the Hollywood legend, who taught at Queen’s University, Belfast, in the 1930s and ’40s. Flynn senior was born in Australia but … Read more
The Lockout centenary inevitably focuses attention on Dublin’s tenement slums, but urban poverty is nothing new. Amongst the copious holdings of Marsh’s LIbrary are a small collection of papers relating to one of the less salubrious institutions of eighteenth-century Dublin: its workhouse (MS Z.3.1.1, 143-55). … Read more
Situated in the centre of Boyle, King House has had a varied history over 300 years but is now fully restored, as Nollaig Feeney explains. One of the earliest surviving substantial townhouses in the province of Connacht, King House was built for Sir Henry King MP (c. 1681–1739) between 1720 and 1740. It was subsequently … Read more