BY DONAL FALLON MICHAEL DAVITT EXHIBITION Running until June 2026, Character is Better than Wealth: The Enduring Legacy of Michael Davitt is a new temporary exhibition in the Old Library of Trinity College, Dublin, drawing on the university’s rich archival holdings. Davitt is best recalled for his agitation on the question of land reform, but … Read more
BY DONAL FALLON WEXFORD ORAL HISTORIES GO ONLINE The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) continues to provide an important online home for Irish primary source materials, and great credit is due to Wexford Library and Archives for uploading four collections of oral history recordings, which are now freely available to researchers internationally. The collections include … Read more
BY DONAL FALLON FOCUS THEATRE REMEMBERED In one of his final acts as president, Michael D. Higgins (together with his wife Sabina) unveiled a plaque to honour the Focus Theatre in Pembroke Place, Dublin. The theatre was the true inheritor of the spirit of the earlier Pike Theatre (and only slightly larger) and would bring … Read more
BY DONAL FALLON A LITERARY FEUD RECALLED The recent auction of the library of the late Tommy Smith (publican and republican) from Purcell Auctioneers produced some extraordinary sales. A rare first edition of At-Swim-Two-Birds, complete with dust-jacket, fetched a record price for a work by Flann O’Brien at auction. Most were destroyed when the warehouse … Read more
BY DONAL FALLON CLÓSCAPE The beautiful cló gaelach typeface is slowly but surely disappearing from the streets of the capital. Pre-dating independence and showing a commitment from Dublin Corporation to the language, the green and white signs dot the landscape, but many have been replaced by more modern equivalents. Funded by the Trinity Long Room … Read more