With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 a requirement for additional training areas for the British Army was recognised as an urgent necessity by the government in London. Early in the following year it was announced that camps would be established at Aldershot in Hampshire and on the Curragh of Kildare. Tradition of … Read more
In some humble céili house in the west of Ireland long ago the musician put his fiddle down to give the dancers a rest. It was time for the ‘singer of the household’ to take the floor, drawing from oral tradition sustained down the centuries in elemental form by echoes of ancestral voices. An itinerant … Read more
Sir—I enjoyed Luke Gibbons’ article on Edmund Burke (HI Winter 1997),but may I add another point on the well-known Burke quotation in BrianFriel’s Philadelphia here I come. The quotation, from Reflections onthe Revolution in France (‘It is now sixteen or seventeen years since Isaw the Queen of France…’), was from a passage that generations ofIrish … Read more
The Year of Liberty: a history of the great Irish rebellion of 1798, Thomas Pakenham (Weidenfeld, 1969 & 1997, £14.99, ISBN: 0297823868). Partners in Revolution: the United Irishmen and France, Marianne Elliott (Yale University Press, 1982 & 1998, £14.50, ISBN: 0300043023). Rebellion in Kildare, 1798-1803, Liam Chambers (Four Courts Press, 1998, pb £9.95, ISBN: 1851823638, … Read more
James (Mick) Magennis was born in West Belfast and served in the Royal Navy in World War II. He was the only person from Northern Ireland to win the Victoria Cross, and the only person in naval history to exit a submarine (a midget … Read more