Photo : Desertserges man, Dick Barrett One of the sound bites to emerge after the 2020 election is that the ‘old civil war politics is dead’. This reflected the emergence of Sinn Féin (SF) as a party equal in strength to the traditional big two, Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine […]
In Brian Friel’s masterpiece drama, ‘Translations’, a young English soldier and a local Irish peasant girl fall madly in love. This happens, in spite of their inability to communicate through language and the fact that they come from cultural, polar opposites – the conqueror and conquered. The local learned school […]
One of our greatest weaknesses when reading and studying history about Ireland is often our failure to contextualise Irish history in comparison to what was happening elsewhere in the world. I have written a lot about the revolutionary period in Ireland, which covers our War of Independence and Civil War […]
I have a flavour of the Dublin Festival of History coming up on www.westcorkfm.ie next month. The annual event, which runs from October 1 for three weeks serves up feast of historical events; from talks to walks, panel discussions to screenings and all for free, thanks to Dublin City council and […]
History teaches us the Conservative Party better watch out says Kieran Doyle I finally got Dr Martin O’Donoghue’s lecture on the 1918 general election, up on www.westcorkfm.ie I’ve mentioned him a little while back as one of the keynote speakers of the inaugural ‘History Scoops’ talks in De Barras. Since […]