The first balloon crossing of the Irish Sea in July 1817. By Mark Davies ‘I am just come from the clouds; I should now wish to visit the deep.’ This was the bravado request of twenty-year-old Windham Sadler, only hours after becoming the first man ever to make an aerial crossing of the Irish Sea, … Read more
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, born at Bath, Somerset, in 1744, died at Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, 200 years ago. By Tony Lyons The Edgeworths settled in Ireland in the mid-1580s during the reign of Elizabeth I, having come from Edgeware near London. Their principal Irish seat was in County Longford. Over subsequent years the family’s fortunes ebbed … Read more
Bushe, Connell and an eighteenth-century Irish population controversy. By David Parker Gervase Parker Bushe was a taxman. It was his job to ensure that you paid your dues to the Board of Revenue, and that, even if you were ‘on the parish’ and entitled to tax-free status, you—or rather your dwelling, the basis of the … Read more
ALTHOUGH HE NEVER SET FOOT IN IRELAND, HE CONFIDENTLY PROCLAIMED HIS ETHNICITY By Marion R. Casey ‘No, he is not an Irishman. He was born in Ireland; but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse’ —Daniel O’Connell (referring to the duke of Wellington), Mullaghmast, 1843. Long ago O’Connell put his … Read more
BLACK ’47, WHICH COMMENCES SHOOTING SHORTLY, IS NOT THE FIRST FAMINE-THEMED FILM TO BE ENVISAGED By Bryce Evans This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Liam O’Flaherty’s novel Famine, set during Ireland’s Great Hunger (1845–51). O’Flaherty’s literary contemporary Seán O’Faoláin called Famine ‘tremendous’, ‘biblical’, containing ‘a compression of emotion only to be … Read more