By Fiona Fitzsimons As the US tightened immigration controls in the 1920s and ’30s, free travel continued between Ireland and the United Kingdom. By the 1930s, Britain was the main destination for Irish emigrants. The informal arrangement that allowed free movement meant that neither state kept records of migration: we have no ships’ manifests, few … Read more
By Matin Modarressi To commemorate the semi-centenary of Northern Ireland, the UK government launched a four-month festival in Belfast’s Botanic Gardens known as ‘Ulster ’71’ and issued a set of postage stamps featuring colourful landscape paintings of Northern Ireland. The government was seeking to convey a message of pride and progress against a backdrop of … Read more
A brief history of the Irish Naval Service. By Daire Brunicardi The naval provisions were an important part of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The British Admiralty was forceful in its recommendation to government to prohibit the Irish Free State from having a navy. This was modified in the finally agreed Treaty under Article 6, … Read more
William Lee was fifteen years of age when he joined the Liverpool postal service as a telegraphist, rising through the ranks of the department to become its chief superintendent. He also dedicated himself to academic study and natural history research, and by 1902 he had achieved a BA. He followed that up with an MA … Read more
Doctus in se semper divitas habet. (School motto: ‘The learned man always has riches within himself’.) By Michael Quinn Charles Desmond Greaves, the historian, poet, scientist, philosophical thinker and political activist who dedicated the greater part of his life to Irish affairs, was born in 1913 in Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, across the … Read more