De Valera, Hitler & the visit of condolence May 1945

A terse paragraph in the Irish national dailies on 3 May 1945 started the avalanche of international protest. Under the heading ‘People and Places’, the Fianna Fáil-backed Irish Press reported […]

The Belfast Blitz: April-May 1941

On 29 October 1940, Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig made his last major speech in parliament—a typically impassioned tub-thumping assault on a Nationalist motion supporting Irish unity. By […]

Frank Ryan & Collaboration: a reassesment

The death of Frank Ryan in Loschwitz Sanatorium outside Dresden in June 1944 three months before his forty-second birthday, brought an end to a life which spanned four wars and […]

Keating, Siemens & the Shannon Scheme

Sean Keating was one of the more significant painters in the formative years of the Irish Free State. He was born in Limerick in 1889, where he enrolled in the […]

Casement’s Black Diaries: closed books reopened

On the fourth and last day of his trial, in an exchange in court between the Attorney-General, Sir F.E. Smith—leading the prosecution—and the Chief Justice, reference was made for the […]