Tag: History
Edmund Burke and the Irish Canon
“Berkeley proved that the world was a vision, and Burke that the State was a tree, no mechanism to be pulled in pieces and put up again, but an oak tree that had grown through centuries” -W.B. Yeats Burke and the 20th Century: The Irish 20th century left many casualties in its wake. As the century drew to...
The Wrong Side of History
On September 30th 1938 a clearly euphoric British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain returned home to a huge cheering crowd at Heston Aerodrome in West London. He had spent the previous days in Munich with other European leaders, in meetings hosted...
Film Review: Black 47
Directed by Lance Daly, the historical drama Black 47 centres around a battle-hardened Connaught Ranger, Feeney (played by the Australian actor James Frecheville), who deserts his unit and returns home to Connemara at the height of this most calamitous period...
The Death of a Republic I : The Death of a Democracy
To whom it may concern; I hereby regret to inform you that after a long battle with various afflictions, the Irish Republic (née Saorstát Éireann) passed away during the year 2018. She went relatively peacefully in her sleep, the last...
Welcome to Post-Catholic Ireland
On a cold January afternoon in 1922, Irish history changed forever in the courtyard of Dublin Castle, as the last Viceroy of Ireland handed over the keys of the city’s most historic building to the new Provisional Government of the...
Book Review: Borstal Boy
Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan is a book that I’ve meant to read for a long time, and I finally got around to it last year. My main interest in Brendan Behan is as an icon of Irishness, and as...
The Death and Rebirth of the Russian Economy
In the years before its collapse, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had an underdeveloped and horrifically mismanaged economy. The Russian Federation inherited the vast majority of this mess in 1991. With the collapse of the USSR, many well-to-do figures...
Judging 80’s Ireland
The long overdue apology by an Garda Síochána issued last month to Joanne Hayes, whose life was blighted forever by the almost forgotten “Kerry Babies” scandal, has triggered a thoroughly risible campaign to re-write recent Irish history. The media coverage...
Why Ireland leans to the Left
One of the greatest pleasures for a student of politics is to encounter an informed citizen from a nation whose political system you have studied, and to discuss with them the situation there. Answers to the mysteries of Irish politics,...
W.B. Yeats: Irish Revolutionary Conservative
“I do not appeal to the professional classes, who, in Ireland, at least, appear at no time to have thought of the affairs of their country till they first feared for their emoluments – nor do I appeal to the shoddy society of...