The British Offer to End Partition, June 1940

One of the most intriguing episodes in the history of Anglo-Irish relations is the British proposal in June 1940 to end partition in return for Ireland’s participation in the war […]

Thomas Keneally: Australian for History

HM:    Was your upbringing distinctively Irish? TK:    Yes, an Irish Catholic one. It began roughly three hundred miles up the coast from Sydney in a town called Kempsey. Kempsey was […]

Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn

Foras Feasa ar Éirinn is a history of the kingdom of Ireland, written by Geoffrey Keating, an Old English Catholic priest from south County Tipperary, and completed in about 1634. […]

The Flying Boats of Foynes

The story begins in 1935, when by the Montreal Agreement, the governments of the USA, the UK, Canada and the Irish Free State ruled that all transatlantic aircraft would land […]

The Introduction of the Potato into Ireland

Isn’t it ironic that the conquistadors of Spain, who first brought the potato to the attention of those outside the Americas, were relatively indifferent to the vegetative gold that they […]