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John ‘Old Smoke’ Morrissey the man who ordered the death of Bill ‘the...
John ‘Old Smoke’ Morrissey By John Joe McGinley One of the most famous characters who inhabited the violent landscape of the Five Points Irish enclave of lower Manhattan in New York was Bill ‘the...
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Book Review: The Irish Defence Forces, 1922-2022
By Eoin Kinsella, Published by: Four Courts Press, (2023), 360 pp. ISBN: 9781801510363 Reviewer: Jack Kavanagh Eoin Kinsella’s study of the Irish Defence Forces provides a much-needed official...
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The Irish Story Top Ten articles of 2023
Happy New Year to all Irish Story readers and contributors! These were our top ten most read articles of 2023. Rioting in Marrowbone, Belfast, 1920. Top Ten Articles The First battle of Marrowbone,...
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Book Review: A Year of Glory and Gold 1932- Ireland’s Jazz Age
By Kevin C. Kearns Published by Gill Books, 2023 Reviewer: Sylvie Kleinman ISBN: 9780717195619 Kevin C. Kearns has written a multi-facetted social and cultural biography of the year 1932 in Ireland,...
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The Decade of Centenaries: A Reflection
Crowds on Dublin’s O’Connell Street during the 2016 Easter Rising commemoration. (Pic Courtesy of Irish Times). By John Dorney The ‘decade of commemorations’, the series of hundred year anniversaries...
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Sir Charles McCarthy, from Wild Geese to West Africa
Sir Charles McCarthy By John Dorney On 21 January 1824, Charles McCarthy, a British officer and Governor of the Sierra Leone and Gold Coast colonies, breathed his last under a tree near the Bonsa...
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Podcast: The Nine Years War
Fighting in 16th century Ireland. Podcast with Cathal Brennan and John Dorney, first broadcast on the Irish History Show. Following on from our show on the Desmond rebellions, this show covers the war...
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Book Review: Radical Basque Nationalist-Irish Republican Relations, A History
By Niall Cullen Published by Routledge, 2024 Reviewer: John Dorney Minority national causes have often looked to each other for inspiration and education. It is also common for those with a sense of...
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The Irish Volunteers of the Eighteenth Century: Successfully Importing the...
The Irish Volunteers demonstrate outside the Irish parliament in Dublin. Painting by Francis Wheatley By Ruairi Nolan The Volunteers of the eighteenth century were a group which embodied a rising Irish...
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Book Review: Shifting Sentiment: Press Opinion in Ireland’s Revolutionary...
By Dermot Meleady Published by Wordwell Press, 2023 Reviewer: Eoin O’Driscoll ISBN: 9781913934347 From a contemporary perspective, living in the Ireland which emerged from the revolutionary period of...
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Shunned. Ostracised. Excommunicated … Boycotted. The tribulations of Captain...
A depiction of roadside murder during the Land War. By Myles Dungan ‘Mayo people do not steal, and if they shot a stranger, it would only be by mistake for a Scotch farmer or an English agent.’[1]...
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The UCC Civil War Fatality Project – Counting the dead of the Irish Civil War
Pro-Treaty troops wounded in Dublin in the Civil War. By John Dorney During fighting between pro and anti-Treaty forces in Limerick city in July 1922, Catherine Sexton was penned in her home in Quarry...
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Podcast: the Ulster Plantation
The city of Derry, or Londonderry, due to the involvement of the Companies of London, planned and built during the Ulster Plantation. John Dorney and Cathal Brennan discuss the colonisation and...
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Podcast: The UCC Irish Civil War Fatalities Project
A Republican funeral at Glasnevin in 1922, that of Cathal Brugha, killed on July 5 of that year. Cathal Brennan discusses the Irish Civil War Fatality Project of University College Cork with John...
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The Plantation of Ulster: A Brief Overview
The walls of Derry. The walled city was founded during the Ulster Plantation. By John Dorney The Plantation of Ulster was the project by the English monarchy, to colonise the northern province of...
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Book review: Ulster’s Lost Counties – Loyalism and Paramilitarism since 1920
By Edward Burke Published by Cambridge University Press, 2024 Reviewer: Kieran Glennon The late doyen of northern historians, Éamon Phoenix, often recounted the story of a Presbyterian clergyman in...
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Book Reviews: Pro-Franco Irish in the Spanish Civil War
Crusade in Spain, by Eoin O’Duffy & Michael McCormack, 1938, republished 2019, Reconquista Press Salamanca Diaries, Father McCabe and the Spanish Civil War, by Tim Fanning, Merrion Press, 2019...
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Undermining democracy? The IRB and the 1918 election
By John O’Beirne Ranelagh. An adapted extract from his new book ‘The Irish Republican Brotherhood 1914-1924’. Without the IRB, there would not have been a Rising in 1916, or an IRA, let alone a War of...
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The Belfast News Letter and the Irish Civil War
A National Army soldier and RUC officer at the border in Pettigo, Co Donegal By John Dorney There were, effectively, two civil wars in Ireland in 1922-23. The first was within the new state of Northern...
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Cora Hughes: An Irish Pasionaria
Death notice of Cora Hughes in the Irish Press. By Caroline Crowley To those of us reared in poverty it is not so difficult to take up the cause of emancipation of the people. It is our only hope of...
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