GH: Did you always want to study history? EC: I used to read historical novels endlessly as a teenager and I went to UCD in the late ‘50s to study English and History. I switched off English within weeks, I’m afraid, whereas I found History tremendously exciting. In the History Department people like Maureen Wall, … Read more
Sir,—Re. Sean Connolly’s passing jab in your Autumn 1995 issue, dismissing as ‘hopelessly anachronistic’ my description of Charles Lucas as a nationalist. It is curious how apparently sophisticated ‘revisionist’ historical interpretations can be simply uncritical regurgitations of contemporary or near-contemporary prejudices. The portrayal of Lucas as a mere corporation politician and anti-Catholic bigot is a … Read more
The existence of two administrative counties with all the appropriate apparatus of local government within the geographical county of Tipperary has always raised the question as to how this arrangement came about. There are bigger, more populous counties in Ireland: scale and internal geographical features in counties like Donegal, Cork and Galway, for example, create … Read more
In the late 1880s trade unionism was an almost unknown phenomenon among unskilled and semi-skilled workers in Connacht. In the agrarian sector it was only the herdsmen who had made efforts to organise in unions, and in the towns it was the artisans and drapers’ assistants who were organised to a certain degree. Twenty-five years … Read more
Over the past three decades historians have documented fully the rise and successful mobilisation of Irish national consciousness during the nineteenth century and the subsequent establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. What is not so well known is that by an evolving, if often haphazard, process of reform in county and municipal administration … Read more