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
Nicholas Mansergh was one of the last great historians of empire. He thus wrote with more elegance than Gibbon but with the dry wit of one who has witnessed folly amid the collapse of kings and princes. In a wonderful diary entry of 29 June 1937, the twenty-seven year old Mansergh cynically records a luncheon … Read more
Arthur Griffith has been overshadowed by more glamorous contemporaries. For many people the founder of Sinn Féin is the enemy of Larkin, the defender of anti-semitic pogroms, the opponent of Synge’s Playboy. Brian Maye has often defended Griffith’s memory; now he has produced this long-awaited biography. Maye adopts a thematic rather than a chronological format. … Read more
For most people, historical knowledge is constituted by the oral and the visual. The oral tradition transmits a sense of tradition and belonging creating an identity which is buttressed by visual representations which help lodge potent images in the mind. Both oral and visual traditions are essentially backward looking, helping form a link with the … Read more
Among the large number of departmental records made available to researchers in early January this year was one bulky file from 1968 containing correspondence relating to the repatriation of the remains of the Connaught Rangers mutineers who had died in India in 1920. The release of these documents renders timely an examination of their mutiny … Read more