Derrynane House, ‘Mecca of the lovers of liberty’

Derrynane House, Co. Kerry, once known as Derrynane Abbey, was the ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell, one of the most celebrated figures in modern Irish history. From his infancy to […]

Daniel O’Connell and the campaign against slavery

Three years before his death in 1847, Daniel O’Connell was celebrated in Martin Chuzzlewit, the novel of his favourite writer, Charles Dickens. The section of the book (see panel above) was […]

Swaddling John and the Great Awakening

Dublin in the 1740s was a Protestant city, and one that was alive to the hair-splitting controversies that stirred up the non-conformist world. Arminians, Baptists, Bradilonians, Muggletonians, Quakers, Socinians and […]

‘Miraculous meddlers’: the Catholic Action movement

In the newly independent Irish Free State the Catholic Church was deeply insecure about its role in the new state, which had been born out of violence—a violence, moreover, that […]

‘A man of great power for a long time’:Tigernán Ua Ruairc and the Book of Kells

Depending on the source and time, Tigernán Ua Ruairc (ob. 1172), the great twelfth-century king of Bréifne, was variously described as a ‘man of great power for a long time’, […]