Tag: Home Rule

Propaganda posters and postcards on Pinterest

by Bruce Gaston • 27 October 2020

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. ↩

The Red Hand of Ulster by George A. Birmingham:
A Review

by Bruce Gaston • 20 February 2015

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…

Book Review: Fatal Path by Ronan Fanning

by Bruce Gaston • 12 June 2014

This book was published last year to much acclaim. There were lots of complimentary reviews, and I’m not going to dissent here from the majority view. Ronan Fanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin and this…

Book Review: Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies

by Bruce Gaston • 28 March 2014

I bought this book on a whim, partly because I guessed (correctly) that it would have something in it about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is a casual interest of mine. Judging by what I’ve found on the internet, the book…

Irish History Compressed’s Pinterest board on the Decade of Commemorations/Centenaries

by Bruce Gaston • 5 February 2014

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.

Book review: Acts of Union and Disunion, by Linda Colley

by Bruce Gaston • 31 January 2014

I bought this on a whim last week and have now almost finished reading it. It’s based on the BBC Radio 4 radio series of the same name, which dealt with the various acts and processes that have either bound…

My top books on Irish history

by Bruce Gaston • 13 December 2013

There are a lot of books on Irish history, and the current Decade of Commemoration has prompted a flood of new ones. Here’s my choice of a few of those that have been around for a while but are still…

Ireland’s Decade of Commemoration: A List of Anniversaries

by Bruce Gaston • 19 April 2013

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…

The Re-Introduction of Direct Rule in Northern Ireland: 24 March 1972

by Bruce Gaston • 21 December 2012

Forty years ago on this day, the British government reassumed direct control of the province of Northern Ireland, thus ending one half of an early British experiment with devolution. (The other half, the establishment of a semi-independent ‘Dominion–style’ government in…

The Loyal Dublin Volunteers: a forgotten organisation

by Bruce Gaston • 9 November 2012

History always brings up surprises. I’d never heard of this before. At its peak the LDV boasted a membership of some 2000 men. Many were of Ulster birth, some 768 men and women signed the Ulster Covenant and Declaration within…