John Bull’s Paddy

MC: Tell me about your family connections with Ireland. PM: My mother’s family are Roches from County Cork, who have lived there since the middle of the thirteenth century. They […]

Surfing an ocean of data:Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

The original Dictionary of National Biography (henceforth referred to as the DNB), edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, appeared between 1885 and 1900, and was followed by a series […]

The Catholic Church and the writing of the 1937 constitution

Eamon de Valera came to power in 1932 as the head of a minority Fianna Fáil government. The writing of a new constitution and its subsequent endorsement by the Irish […]

‘Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler’?…The IRA and the Nazis

‘Oh here’s to Adolph Hitler, Who made the Britons squeal, Sure before the fight is ended They will dance an Irish reel.’ (War News, 21 November 1940) Seán Russell, the […]

Ireland’s greatest football team?

As in other parts of the British Isles, ball games were a popular form of recreation in Ireland long before the modern versions of the games that became soccer and […]