The response to the Belfast blitzes of 1941. By Pat Poland By April 1941 the United Kingdom had been at war with Nazi Germany for over a year and a half. From the start, the authorities in Northern Ireland believed that they were geographically too far removed from the main action for it to have … Read more
Does photo colourisation bring us closer to the past? By Emily Mark-Fitzgerald In 1988 Ted Turner announced that he intended to colourise Citizen Kane. A critical and popular outcry soon forced a retreat, though Turner continued to colourise black-and-white films from both RKO and MGM’s back catalogues for decades, albeit with lukewarm public reception. Three … Read more
www.dib.ie By Terry Clavin In March 2021, the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) moved to an ‘open-access’ model, making its entire corpus of nearly 11,000 biographical entries freely available to all users through a new website at www.dib.ie. The DIB marked its move to open access by publishing a number of high-profile new entries online, … Read more
In recent years, Tom Kettle has featured prominently in public discourse as an exemplar of the ‘forgotten’ Irish who died in the Great War. But what did he stand for? By Niamh Reilly After he was killed in the Battle of the Somme, Tom Kettle (1880–1916) was widely and effusively eulogised as ‘the most brilliant … Read more
The marquis de Boisseleau and the ‘Battle of the Breach’ at the first siege of Limerick, 1690. By Pádraig Lenihan History recalls Patrick Sarsfield as the hero who saved Limerick from Williamite besiegers in August 1690. The Frenchman who actually commanded the troops holding the city is less well known, though Limerick’s 2013 ‘Sarsfield’s Day’ … Read more