This post was inspired by, and is in honour of, my translators into Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese (neither of whom, as far as I know, have Irish ancestry). [Edit 7/9/2015: I stand corrected. “Dowling” is an anglicised version of a…
Author: Bruce Gaston
A Beginner’s Guide to the Gallipoli Campaign
What? The Battle of Gallipoli. Also known as? The Dardanelles Campaign Where? I suppose you’re going to say “Gallipoli” aren’t you? Yes — the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey, which forms the nothern bank of the Dardanelles Strait,…
Loyalist paramilitaries:
An overview
In the Troubles loyalists killed 990 people; 708 simply because they were Catholics.1 The question is “Why?” Main Groupings The two most important and longest-established loyalist terrorist groups are: Ulster Volunteer Force founded in 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the…
The Red Hand of Ulster by George A. Birmingham:
A Review
My attention was first called to Ulster-born writer George A. Birmingham by a review of his novel The Major’s Candlesticks on the Reading 1900–1950 blog. That novel is a comedy set in the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence…
A Short History of Ireland in Spanish and Portuguese:
"Uma História Resumida Da Irlanda/Historia Resumida De Irlanda"
Exciting news: IHC’s e-book guide to Irish history has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, with an Italian translation in progress. As well as Amazon, all the usual retailers are stocking it: Apple, Google Play, Scribd, Kobo and so on,…
Irish History Compressed’s most popular posts in 2014
These are the posts that got the most views in 2014: History Carnival 131 (March 2014) Book Review: Fatal Path by Ronan Fanning (June 2014) Significant Commas in Irish History (February 2014) “Scots should recall the poverty of the Irish…
State papers: Dublin’s fear of civil war and Provos bankrolled by Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi:
from BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
There wasn’t as much coverage of the revelations contained in declassified government papers this year as there was last year – surprising as they deal with the period of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. There are a few little gems nonetheless, such…
Who was Felix Park?
Nowadays, of course, there’s Irish History Compressed to deal with these kinds of annoyances!
The Flight of the Earls
This post was originally written on Quora in answer to the question: “Irish History: What was the ‘Flight of the Earls’, and why was it important?” This is my response: It probably matters most because of what it symbolised. The…
Article link: Opinion: ‘Cromwell was Framed’ | The Irish Story
Here’s a brave man: historian and writer Tom Reilly, having gone back to the historical sources, says there is no credible contemporary evidence of the massacre of the population of Drogheda by Roundhead troops in 1649. […] in the eleven…