By Pat Poland By his own admission, Richard ‘Dickie’ Beamish, born in 1909 into the famous Cork brewing family of Ashbourne House, Glounthaune, Co. Cork, never wanted to be head of the firm. As a young man he was a free spirit and could not envisage being confined to a dreary desk, crunching boring numbers … Read more
By Daniel Mulhall I have often wondered where Arthur Griffith got the idea for his influential political tract The resurrection of Hungary, published in 1904. It led to the setting up the following year of the first Sinn Féin party, dubbed ‘the green Hungarian band’ by the caustic pen of Leader editor D.P. Moran. Griffith … Read more
By Sandrine Tromeur In the late 1630s and early 1640s, a handful of Irish Catholic merchants settled in La Rochelle, a French port city largely dominated by an élite of Protestant (Huguenot) mercantile families. Over time, the small Irish group gradually grew in number, and by the 1670s it had developed into a nascent community … Read more
Irish soldiers, surgeons, revolutionaries and pressmen—as well as at least one downright chancer—all joined in the conflict that saw the downfall of the Second French Empire. By Isadore Ryan Irish participation in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1 took various forms and was overwhelmingly on the side of Ireland’s historical ally, France. The onset of the … Read more
By David Mould In July 1817 the Irish-born James Hastie, a 30-year-old East India Company sergeant, embarked on an ambitious and risky mission. From the east coast of Madagascar, he travelled by canoe and on foot to the central highlands. His destination: the court of the Ovah king, Radama, the most powerful clan chief on … Read more