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
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.]
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…
There are so many images available online from the period 1912-1923 (the source of the ‘Decade of Commemorations/Centenaries’ I’ve written about before) that I decided to make a dedicated Pinterest board to store any that I find. Have a look, and if you like share and comment.
The Times Higher Education Supplement has a review by Marianne Elliott: The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923, by Charles Townshend | Books | Times Higher Education.
For my own reference as much as anyone else’s I’ve drawn up a list of dates within the much-discussed ‘Decade of Commemorations’, aka ‘Decade of Centenaries’ (which seems to last more than ten years, but never mind): 1912 Introduction of…
A post on the New Island Books blog has drawn my attention to recent controversy over (alleged?) British collaboration with the Free State army in the attack on the Four Courts, which I wrote about here. It’s worth clicking through…
Michael Collins was born in County Cork on 16 October 1890, and worked as a young man for several years in London, where he joined the secret society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. After returning to Ireland in 1915 he fought…
Éamon De Valera was born 14 October 1882 in New York to a Cuban father and an Irish mother, but returned to live with relatives in Bruree, County Limerick, as a small child. He studied mathematics and worked as a…
On this day ninety years ago, the newly formed army of the Irish Free State opened cannon fire upon the Four Courts, a large neoclassical building dominating the quayside in central Dublin. Their aim? To dislodge former colleagues from the…