An Ascendancy and its vampires

During the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth, England ruled Ireland through a class of landlords distinguished from their Catholic fellow countrymen not only by economic position but also […]

The ‘oral-bishop’: the epicurean theology of Bishop Frederick Hervey, 1730–1803

Two summers ago in Derry, a portrait of the eighteenth-century earl-bishop Frederick Hervey was stolen from St Columb’s Cathedral and placed on a bonfire in the Bogside, to be consumed […]

Creating facts on the ground:the destruction of Clandeboye

One of Ireland’s most important parliaments was held in Dublin in 1541. This declared Henry VIII to be ‘king of Ireland’ and made all Irishmen, whatever their origin, Gaelic or […]

‘Framing’ the Anglo-Norman invasion:Robin Frame on medieval Irish history and why it matters

In 1969 a 26-year-old Belfast boy with a distinguished undergraduate record applied for a lectureship at the University of Durham. Robin Frame was then at work on his doctoral dissertation […]

Sunday 6 June 1518—the day the Renaissance came to Ireland

In June 1518 a fleet carrying the Archduke Ferdinand from Spain to the Low Countries was blown off course and arrived in Kinsale. One member of that expedition, Laurent Vital, […]