The Catalpa escape involved the rescue of six men serving life sentences. All were former British soldiers who had taken the Fenian oath. Continue reading
Filed under History …
Untold History
They remembered the Black and Tans. Twenty years later, they refused to be conscripted into the British army a world away. Continue reading
Brilliantly Inventive Stoppard Play for Bloomsday
Screwball eggheads tear up the Library in ‘Travesties’, Tom Stoppard’s brilliant comedy about Joyce, Lenin and Tzara. Continue reading
The Multiple Identities of the Irish in Victoria
Irish-Australians call ourselves Irish Catholics, which is true culturally but our spiritual formation was not specifically Irish, but continental Catholicism. Continue reading
The ‘Best Choir in the Anglosphere’
Catherine Fitzpatrick, a convict’s wife, conductor of the first choir of an infant colony. Continue reading
A Town in Print
A fake new party in Listowel: Tom Doodle promised the citizens that he would open a factory for shaving the hair off gooseberries Continue reading
Recalling Daniel Mannix
Morgan’s book, The Mannix Era, is richly personal. It is written with considerable charm and an acerbic wit. But to read it in 2019 is to be overwhelmed by its masculinist perspective. Continue reading
Radio Days
The wireless in our house in Leitrim in 1941 sat on a high shelf, away from little hands, in the kitchen. It had two batteries, one dry and one wet. Continue reading
Bridget Watson: from Ireland to Lancashire to Hobart
On 18th October 1831 Bridget Watson arrived in Hobart on the Mary III with her three surviving children … Continue reading
Irish Women Migrants of the 1850s
Single women seeking work as domestic servants were faced with frequent ‘No Irish Need Apply’ advertisements in newspapers. Yet, most Irish women did find employment, and were successful immigrants. Continue reading
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