Clik here to view.
Book Review: Was Cromwell Framed?
Cromwell was Framed, Ireland 1649 By Tom Reilly Published by Chronos Books, London, 2014 Reviewer: John Dorney Oliver Cromwell’s name is one the most potent symbols in Irish historical memory. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Oh what a transition it was to be changed from the state of a slave to that...
Frederick Douglass. By Liam Hogan The negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born, nay, he may have been purchased in the womb, and have begun his slavery before he began his existence. -...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Up us!’ – The launch of the Kilmainham Gaol graffiti website.
Cells in Kilmainham. John Dorney reports on the launch of a new initiative to document the graffiti left by political prisoners at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. During the Irish revolutionary period...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: The Howth Gun-Running and the Kilcoole Gun-Running:...
The Howth Gun-Running and the Kilcoole Gun-Running: Recollections and Documents Edited by F.X Martin, (Dublin, Merrion Press, 2014). E17.95. Reviewer: Gerard Madden September 2014 was dominated by the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Greater War: Ireland and eastern Europe 1914-1922
Dublin city centre in ruins in 1916, a taste of the wider war. John Dorney tries to fit Ireland’s experience of war and nationalist revolution into a wider European context. The First World War is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Captain Jack White: Imperialism, Anarchism and the Irish Citizen...
by Leo Keohane Published by Merrion Press, 2014. Reviewer: Daniel Murray When An Post issued a commemorative stamp of Jack White, first commandant of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) on January 2014,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ‘Bridges Job’ – Dublin, August 5-6 1922
Anti-Treaty IRA fighters in Dublin, June 1922. John Dorney on a disastrous operation by the IRA in Dublin during the Irish Civil War. On the early morning of August 5th 1922, some 200 or more young...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Frank Aiken’s War, The Irish Revolution 1916-1923
Frank Aiken’s War, The Irish Revolution 1916-1923 By Matthew Lewis Published by UCD Press, Dublin 2014. Reviewer: John Dorney It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that at the age of just 24,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Today in Irish History, November 28 1920 – The Kilmichael ambush
Tom Barry on IRA active service c. 1921. John Dorney on a famous, bloody action in West Cork during the Irish War of Independence On the 21st of November 1920, Tom Barry a rising star in the Third...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Irish Voices from the Great War
Irish Voices From the Great War By Myles Dungan Published by Irish Academic Press 2014 Reviewer: Barry Sheppard One thing is almost always certain in the run up to any historical anniversary, public...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Bitter Brotherhood: The War of Words of Séumas Robinson
Seumus Robinson, on the left, with (l to r)Sean Treacy, Dan Breen and Michael Brennan. (Courtesy of Irish Volunteer website). Daniel Murray on Seumas Robinson’s re-telling of his War of Independence....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: The Secret of Kit Cavenaugh: A Remarkable Irish Woman and Soldier
Book Review: The Secret of Kit Cavenaugh: A Remarkable Irish Woman and Soldier by Anne Holland Published by Colilns Press Reviewer: Lucy Kinnally When author, Anne Holland stumbled across a small item...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘We must forgive but we won’t forget’ – The Treaty debates in the border...
British troops patrol the new border in 1922. How was the Anglo-Irish Treaty received in the counties it made a frontier zone? By John Dorney. If you lived in the strip of Ireland from Dundalk to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Winter in Dublin
Dublin’s city wall on Cooke Street. Whimsical seasonal thoughts. By John Dorney Today in Dublin, traffic crawls very slowly but somehow very frenetically along into the city centre. Bumper to bumper....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Ireland’s Czar, Gladstonian Government and the Lord...
By James H. Murphy University Dublin College Press. 2014. 400 pages. Reviewers: Petrushka Kharchenko & Carol Kiley This work by James H. Murphy presents a description of the chapter in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Irish Story Top 10 Articles of 2014
Ballyconnell, scene of a series of tragedies in the Irish Civil War Happy New Year! Last year the Irish Story was visited more than 285,000 times with an average of 780 visits per day. Here are our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: The Last Cavalier, Richard Talbot (1631-91)
By Padraig Lenihan Published by UCD Press, Dublin 2014 Reviewer: John Dorney One upon a time there would have been no need, as Padraig Lenihan does at the start of this book, to assert the reason why...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“A damn good clean fight.” The Last Stand of the Leixlip Flying Column
Free State troops in an armoured car. An anti-Treaty column is captured and five of its members executed in December 1922. By Christopher Lee. Heavy machine gun fire ricochets off the brick walls of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book Review: Easter Widows
Easter Widows, Seven Irish Women who lived in the shadow of the 1916 Rising. By Sinéad McCoole Published by Doubleday Ireland, 2014. Reviewer: Eoin O’Driscoll “All changed, changed utterly. A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘The Perfect Physique’ – Eugen Sandow in Ireland, 1898
Eugen Sandow. Conor Patrick Heffernan on famous strongman Eugen Sansdow’s visit to Ireland in 1898. In April 1898, reports began to emerge in Irish periodicals that the self-proclaimed, world’s...
View Article