I’m delighted to say that the (still unpublished) second edition of Irish History Compressed has been translated into German. I decided that the first edition (which ended with the economic crash of 2008) needed updated to take into account the…
Author: Bruce Gaston
Eine komprimierte Geschichte Irlands:
On this day: The Signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty
On this day, after over a month of arduous and sometimes ill-tempered negotiation, delegates representing Dáil Éireann, the break-away Irish parliament, signed an agreement with the British government that brought to an end the political violence that had wracked Ireland…
Sisi, Maynooth and St. George
This is actually from a call for papers for an academic conference on Austrian travel writing, but I found it pretty funny: On 24 February 1879, Empress Elizabeth of Austria (‘Sisi’), participating in a stag hunt out of Summerhill House,…
On this day: the Opening of the Northern Irish Parliament
One hundred years ago this week, on 22 June 1921, the official opening of a new parliament within the the United Kingdom took place. After elections on 24 May across the newly created entity of “Northern Ireland” (made up of…
Two Northern Irish book reviews:
Paramilitary Loyalism: Identity and Change/A Difficult Birth: The Early Years of Northern Ireland, 1920–5
Richard Reed, Paramilitary Loyalism: Identity and Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) Alan F. Parkinson, A Difficult Birth: The Early Years of Northern Ireland, 1920–5 (Dublin: Eastwood, 2020) As preparation for a guest lecture I gave at the University of…
A Short Biography of John Bulmer Hobson:
“The most dangerous man in Ireland”
John Bulmer Hobson was born on 14 January 1883 in Belfast and died on 8 August 1969 in Castleconnell, County Limerick. Unusually for an Irish revolutionary he actually came from a Protestant family. His family were Quakers, which is a…
Propaganda posters and postcards on Pinterest
That’s a very alliterative title! I’ve been neglecting the Irish History Compressed Pinterest pages for quite a while now but just recently I’ve added some new pictures, all related to publicity campaigns/propaganda from the period of the Irish revolution. It’s meant to show many contrasting threads of opinion, so there are posters issued by Irish nationalists and Ulster Unionists, with a few others such as the ICA (who I hesitate to lump in with “Irish nationalists”, as their initial aims were quite different1). The one pictured here is interesting. I’ve never seen something like it before. I assume the rather odd promise not to conscript anyone into the Cumann na mBan sports days is simply a device to get a poster that prominently declares “NO CONSCRIPTION!” past the censor.
- As it happens, I’m reading The Irish Citizen Army by Ann Matthews (Mercier Press, 2014) at the minute. ↩
Malgorithms
This is kind of funny: Amazon is recommending my own book to me! If you’d like a copy, then follow this link.
Forthcoming: Σύντομη Ιστορία της Ιρλανδίας
The Greek translation of the Irish History Compressed e-book will be available within the next week or two from all the usual outlets. Όντας μία σύντομη εξιστόρηση των σημαντικότερων γεγονότων στην Ιστορία της Ιρλανδίας από την αρχαιότητα μέχρι τον 21ο…
De geschiedenis van Ierland in een notendop
Dit e-book, een korte geschiedenis van Ierland van de prehistorie tot de eenentwintigste eeuw, is bedoeld voor iedereen die snel inzicht wil krijgen in het onderwerp of die zijn kennis erover wil opfrissen. Dit beknopte maar bondige boek is in…