An ex-colleague sent me this link. It’s apparently a contemporary newsreel, and the general tone is all very much of its time. It’s quite odd, though, and a bit inaccurate too. At 1 min. 28 they show what must be…
Author: Bruce Gaston
Book Review: Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923
Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923 Maurice Walsh Faber & Faber So much has been published about the Irish revolutionary period (1910-1923) over the course of the last few years that one has to be selective about…
A Beginner’s Guide to the First Dáil
What? The first Dáil. OK, and again, what? “Dail”? No, “Dáil”, with a fada. That accent thingy? Yes. What does it do? It changes the pronunciation. And the correct pronunciation would be? Doyle. As in Mrs Doyle? From Father Ted?…
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My review of Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic: Transformation, Dislocation and Fantasy in Fin-de-siècle Paris by David Charles Rose has just been published online and will be included in the next issue (26.3) of Irish Studies Review.
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‘Kevin O’Higgins’ Comma’
One of the most popular posts on this website – for whatever reason – is Significant Commas in Irish History. While looking for something completely different, I came across an article in The Irish Jurist about the second of the…
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A website I’m coming to appreciate more and more is archive.org. It’s very useful for finding primary sources such as articles or collections of speeches from the 19th and early 20th century (all of which are out of copyright by now).
Just recently I found Home Rule: Speeches of John Redmond M.P., which contains speeches from 1886 to 1909, and also The Select Speeches of Daniel O’Connell, M. P.
Definitely a lot more convenient than hunting through dusty volumes in the archives, though part of me does miss the romance of doing that…
Declassified Papers 2017-18 edition
The yearly declassification of secret government papers under the "30 year rule" continues to produce interesting material – especially as far as Northern Irish history is concerned, as 30 years ago means 1987, right in the middle of The Troubles.…
Irish History Compressed in French:
Une Brève Histoire de l’Irlande
IHC’s e-book guide to Irish history has been translated into French, joining the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian versions already available. It’ll be uploaded to Amazon soon and is already on Apple, Scribd, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, with more distributers to…
Review of Unapproved Routes by Peter Leary
I saw this advertised somewhere recently and as it seemed relevant to my teaching about Northern Ireland at the minute I ordered it and read it. It’s an attractively produced little volume with elegant typesetting and a number of well…
Fake Irish News
I was interested (is that the word?) to see Irish history was the example in the screenshot of Facebook in today’s Guardian article about how you now are warned if you’re about to repost unreliable information: The reference is to…