Daniel O’Connell: a tribute

I am very pleased to have been invited to mark here in the Reform Club the 150th anniversary of the death of Daniel O’Connell. It is an institution, after all, […]

‘The Ireland that I would have’ De Valera & the creation of an Irish national image

De Valera’s Ireland has been held up to criticism and even ridicule, depicted as an unrealistic over-romanticised vision of comely maidens and dancing at the cross roads. Yet de Valera […]

Framing History: Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins

When Peadar O’Donnell was asked on one occasion why he did not bequeath his papers to posterity for historical research, he replied, half in jest, that he had no desire […]

Soloheadbeg: what really happened?

Seventy-eight years ago on a quiet Tipperary roadway the first nationalist revolt against the British Empire this century was started by a small band of armed men from townlands and […]

The Easter Rising 1916: constructing a canon in art & artefacts

The Easter Rising—in which a twelve-hundred strong force took over the centre of Dublin, proclaimed the right of Irish citizens to the ownership of Ireland, fought, surrendered, and were either […]