COUNTDOWN TO 2016: Release of prisoners, Christmas 1916

By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr The Rising had hardly been the work of a massive conspiracy, but the British acted as if it were. British security forces arrested 3,430 Irish […]

COUNTDOWN TO 2016: Life in Frongoch

By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr Frongoch internment camp was located in a former whiskey distillery in Merionethshire, Wales. Until 1916 it housed German prisoners of war in the disused distillery […]

COUNTDOWN TO 2016: Emmet Dalton and Tom Kettle at the Battle of the Somme

By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr A member of Dublin’s middle class, Tom Kettle joined the Irish Volunteers at their inception in 1913. Previously, he had been a Home Ruler and […]

Countdown to 2016 : Larne Gunrunning

In anticipation of the possibility of Home Rule, Edward Carson and James Craig founded the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in early 1913. Their intention was that unionists in the north […]

Countdown to 2016: The Curragh ‘mutiny’

by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr By the early twentieth century the Curragh army camp in County Kildare was Britain’s premier military base in Ireland. Ulster unionist opposition to the passage […]