I cannot remember exactly how I discovered the book in my teens. What I can remember is the experience of reading it for the first time, of getting lost in its marvellous, frenzied chaos and laughing aloud. It holds a unique appeal for me as an artist because, like a spiral staircase, it tricks you into thinking that you are simultaneously working towards a destination and moving away from it. Continue reading
Tagged with Irish history …
John Corbett’s Reminiscence of Edmund Curtis
I read Modern History and Political Science in Dublin University from 1936 to 1940, talking my degree in absentia in January 1940. The most memorable lectures which I attended were those given by Curtis; he was always interesting and amusing, never the dry historian. Continue reading
On Rereading The Country Girls
I decided to read classics I had not read, and to reread some that I had. I was interested to see if books I had loved on a first reading when I was young, remained beloved. Continue reading
What’s On
Celtic Studies Conference, Sydney September 25-27, 2023 The Tenth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies will be hosted by the Celtic Language Teaching and Research, School of Art, Communications and English, The University of Sydney in person and online. Online sessions will take place in the early evening Sydney time, to facilitate internationalparticipation, and will be … Continue reading
Irish history and its popular versions
But as books must and will be produced to meet the demand, it is now both timely and fair to ask what kind of ‘Irish history’ are we going to have? As a race, we have an extraordinary habit of make-believe. Continue reading
A Really Embarrassing Moment at St. Pat’s
My students were full of energy, fun-loving and were certainly not vindictive or in any way mean, but they loved playing pranks… Continue reading
Should We Forget and Vote for Them?
Two new books about the IRA bombing campaigns of the 70s and 80s. Continue reading
Fintan O’Toole’s Latest – an antipodean perspective
For the marginal outsider like myself, this book explained the geopolitical realignments that occurred so quickly and unexpectedly in Ireland between 1958 and 2018. Continue reading
Irish History Professors in Irish Universities. Brief Lives series. No.7. Professor T.W.Moody
The names Moody and Edwards are jointly synonymous with the emergence of history as an organised academic discipline in Ireland in the late 1930s. Continue reading
This Happened in Ireland. Read and Weep
The Magdalen Laundries from someone who was in one from the age of 11. Continue reading