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…
Category: Significant dates
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…
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?…
Dates, dates, dates…
Prompted by my ongoing quest to identify the “six times [meaning six rebellions] during the last three hundred years” referred to in the 1916 Proclamation, “Mixed messages” (@SignsThe Reading) was kind enough to send me some photos of monuments in…
Have you looked at this photo?
The photo reproduced here shows Patrick Pearse surrendering to Brigadier-General William Lowe on Saturday, 29th April 1916: the effective end of the Easter Rising. The location was Moore Street. If you look closely, it becomes apparent that there is a…
The Proclamation: Promise or Rhetoric?
Over a year and a half ago I wrote a post which posed the question “Was Patrick Pearse bad at maths, or at history, or at both (or at neither)???” You can read the full post here, but in brief…
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…
An answer to my question?
A few weeks ago I posed the question both here and on Twitter about what were the “six times [meaning six rebellions] during the last three hundred years” referred to on the 1916 Proclamation. I didn’t get any response. Having…
Was Patrick Pearse bad at maths, or at history, or at both (or at neither)???
The 1916 Proclamation is probably the best known piece of writing in Irish history, but recently I was asked a question about it I just can’t answer. In the text, Patrick Pearse1 refers to previous uprisings and rebellions as precedents…
1984: UK Government considered repartition of Northern Ireland
Every January the British National Archives prompt a flurry of historical recollections and reflections when they release a tranche of previoulsy confidential government documents under the “thirty-year rule”. This year, 1984 comes under the spotlight, a year in which the…