Two very recent articles in the Guardian on Irish themes:
The Irishwomen who became the paramour of a disastrous South American dictator: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/paraguay-madame-lynch-irish-woman-hero
An update on the digital recreation of the records of the Irish Public Record Office (destroyed in the Irish Civil War, as described here): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/30/pioneering-project-releases-more-lost-irish-records-spanning-700-years
The Irish government has released some previously classified documents at the turn of the year. There are some that cast light on events in Northern Ireland and Ireland more generally.
The Guardian reports on stories aof acrimonious meetings between David Trimble, leader of the UUP, and Tony Blair, in the period after the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1997: David Trimble was ‘extraordinarily rude’ to Tony Blair at Good Friday talks
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/27/david-trimble-was-extraordinarily-rude-to-tony-blair-at-good-friday-talks
Another headline, “Diana apparently believed Northern Ireland part of the Republic, archive shows” seems to put the worst spin on what may have been a slip of the tongue or a poorly expressed pleasantry. Make up your own mind here.
Anyone interested in modern Irish and especially Northern Irish history will definitely want to listen to ex-taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s recently launched podcast on the Northern Ireland peace process.
Here’s a link:
Cheering news for everyone interested in Ireland’s history: the mammoth project to recreate in virtual form the Public Records Office in Dublin’s Four Courts has been officially unveiled. (It can’t be said it’s been completed – indeed, it’s doubtful it ever can be.)
You can read about the destruction of the original archive here.
[Note: this post should have been published in May. For some reason it landed in the “drafts” folder instead.]
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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