Ulster Unionism and the Somme
Almost 2,000 soldiers from the 36th Ulster Division died on the first day of the Somme campaign. When it was withdrawn...
Read moreLongread Features
Women and the 1918 Election
In 1867 the all-male House of Commons at Westminster rejected John Stuart Mill’s amendment to 1867 Franchise Reform Act to...
Read moreHunger Strike and Ireland, 1920
For just a few days, in mid-May 1920, the name Francis A. Gleeson made the papers. It became increasingly common in...
Read moreYeats as ‘Smiling Public Man’: the Nobel Poet and the new State
It was nearly 11 o’clock on the evening of 14 November 1923 when the future editor of the Irish Times telephoned...
Read moreBlood on the Flag: Seán O'Casey's Dublin in the Shadow of Revolution and Civil War
On Thursday, 12 April 1923, The Shadow of a Gunman by Seán O’Casey was first performed on the...
Read moreReturn to Ithaca – How Joyce completed Ulysses
It was in a dancehall called Bal Bullier in Montparnasse in Paris that the artist Arthur Power first met James...
Read moreUnderstanding violence against women in the Irish Revolution – a global context
In 2013, the Irish State launched a decade of remembering the turning points in a “revolution” that led to...
Read moreFootball on Fire - The IRA war on Manchester City and United, 1920-21
1. It takes only a few names to make the point and you could spend an enjoyable, if non-productive, day arguing...
Read moreExplainer: The Kilmichael Ambush
What was the Kilmichael Ambush and was it militarily significant? On 28 November 1920, exactly a week after the events of &lsquo...
Read moreBloody Sunday, 1920 - killing & dying in the Irish revolution
[A fully annotated version of this article is available here] It was the storm after a comparative calm. It followed...
Read more‘Other cheated dead’: Murder and reprisals in Galway’s Gregory-Yeats Country
William Butler Yeats disagreed with his close friend and collaborator Lady Augusta Gregory about a 24-line poem that he wrote...
Read moreIreland and the Battle of the Somme
It used to be a Roman road, hence the arrow-like straightness. Today it is the D929. You will pass cemeteries,...
Read moreSport and self-determination – making Ireland’s case for Olympic recognition
Maybe the International Olympic Committee had invested too much in the branding, had gone too far down the road of...
Read moreFrom Belfast Jail to Blackrock tragedy: the death of Sinn Féiner John Gaskin
John Gaskin was a man of many names. When searching for him in the various records related to the revolutionary...
Read moreBritain & the Proportional Representation question - a lesson from Ireland, 1920
Doubtless Boris Johnson let loose a harrumph of relief at the news of it. When Nigel Farage announced in advance...
Read moreThe Father’s Prayers: W.B. Yeats in 1919
On the 19 March 1919, Yeats arrived at the Abbey Theatre to see a unique performance of the play Cathleen Ní...
Read moreMapping Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920
Four years ago, as teams from Ireland and Australia, lined up in advance of International Rules match at Croke Park, 14...
Read moreIn search of a modern Ireland – the Society of Dublin Painters
On 5 August 1920, a new collective of Irish artists opened their first exhibition at 7 St. Stephen’s Green. The Society...
Read moreWilliam Orpen – Ireland’s painter of war and peace
On the 28 June 1919, the peace treaty was signed in the opulent Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. After...
Read moreFlying into history – Ireland & the story of the first Transatlantic Flight
On 17 December 1903 Orville Wright piloted the world’s first powered airplane in a successful flight. Above a windswept North...
Read moreDe Valera in America
On 1 June 1919, Éamon de Valera, leader of Sinn Féin and President of Dáil Éireann,...
Read moreFEATURE - The Amritsar Massacre, 13 April 1919
In February 1920 in New York, Éamon de Valera was a key note speaker at a ‘Friends of Freedom...
Read moreDaylight Saving - the troubled history of Irish time
In March 2019, MEPs voted overwhelmingly to do away with the practice of changing clocks twice a year – by 2021 Daylight...
Read moreLONGREAD: The Democratic Programme and Labour, 1919
It was an unusual time and place for a controversy about the origins of the State to develop: in the...
Read morePrelude to partition or a republic? The 1918 election in Ireland
Election day was fixed for 14 December 1918, but it took two weeks and a Christmas interval for the votes cast to...
Read moreCradle of the Irish Republic – A Journey through 6 Harcourt Street
Located at the northern end of Harcourt Street, the headquarters of Conradh na Gaeilge are today best known for the...
Read moreThe last to die - Irishmen and the final day of the First World War
The years of World War One, which began in the late summer of 1914, resulted in a tide of men leaving...
Read moreThe Prolonged War: Violence & the Reshaping of Europe 1918-1923
Almost exactly 100 years ago, the Great War ended with the defeat of the Central Powers. Their military collapse went hand-in-hand...
Read moreNovember, 1918: Ireland & the End of the First World War
‘The greatest day in all history’ read the title text on the cinema newsreel and the pictures that...
Read morePost-war Europe – Nations, States & Collapsing Empires
The First World War brought about the collapse of four multinational empires – the Russian empire in 1917, and then the...
Read moreExhibiting the First World War
In October 1918, London’s Trafalgar Square was transformed into a facsimile of a battlefield in France. Hoardings painted to...
Read moreTreating the traumatised: Shell-shocked veterans in the Irish Free State
Given the momentous changes that occurred in Irish politics and society during the First World War, it’s easy...
Read moreRemembering the RMS Leinster: the greatest ever loss of life in the Irish Sea
During the second half of the 19th century and the first 18 years of the 20th, the City of Dublin...
Read moreCommemorating the sinking of the RMS Leinster, 1918-2018
The sinking of the RMS Leinster resulted in the greatest ever loss of life in the Irish Sea and the...
Read moreGaelic Sunday – The GAA v the British Empire
Across the entire span of the decade of centenaries we are in the midst of marking, it is the one...
Read moreThe radicalisation of Irish politics & the wartime experiences of front line troops, 1916-1918
During the First World War, two political upheavals significantly worsened the wartime experiences of front line Irish troops: the 1916 Easter...
Read moreANALYSIS: Lá na mBan, 9 June 1918
On 29 June 1918 the Freemans Journal, under the heading ‘Women and the Menace’, published reports of mass meetings of...
Read more‘HAVE YOU IN IRELAND ALL GONE MAD’ - the 1918 general strike against conscription
An abridged version of this article appeared in Saothar 43, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, April 2018 There are probably...
Read moreHow Ireland was lost in the 1918 conscription crisis
The historian of revolutions Charles Tilly has pointed out that, in general, revolutionary movements find it easier to mobilise popular...
Read moreA Poet among Politicians – George Russell & the Irish Convention
It was New Year’s Eve and the chairman had been working hard to see if he could save...
Read moreUlysses' journey - the first sightings of James Joyce’s masterpiece
STATELY, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor...
Read moreJohn L. Sullivan & the making of an Irish-American sporting legend
Mike Tyson idolised him. Knew his story, admired his ring-craft, his chutzpah. ‘I like his confidence, his arrogance,' he...
Read moreRedmond’s place in our national story is as important as any
There is no statue of John Redmond in our capital city. There is no street named after him either. His...
Read moreClassroom Bolsheviks - Pay, Politics & Ireland’s National Teachers
The years leading up to 1918 had seen growing militancy across many sectors of society. Politics had been transformed by militant...
Read moreANALYSIS: From U-Boats to Human Sharks – Why we should remember the tragedy of the SS Hare
In the early hours of 14 December 1917, U-62 under Commander Ernst Hashagen saw the lights of a small ship astern off...
Read moreBetween armed rebellion and democratic revolution: the Irish Question in 1917
The House of Commons filled with noise and animosity. It was 10 May 1916 and John Dillon, the veteran Irish Parliamentary...
Read moreIntroducing de Valera – The East Clare by-election and the rise of an Irish political leader
The East Clare by-election is remembered, a century later, because it announced Éamon de Valera’s arrival on...
Read moreFEATURE: White Weddings in War-time Ireland
Weddings today are big business. As of 2016 the global wedding industry was worth an estimated €275 billion, while it is...
Read moreFEATURE: America & the Irish Independence Question
As Woodrow Wilson campaigned for re-election to the White House in 1916, he tried – as best he could – to...
Read moreANALYSIS: Driving Irish Industry
by Seán Ó Riain As a child in the 1970s I regularly sat in the back of...
Read moreFEATURE: When Ford Motors came to Cork
by Dr Leanne Blaney A new family business opened their Cork offices at 36 South Mall street in April 1917. They would...
Read moreGeorge Bernard Shaw: Joyriding on the Front
It was a request from the General. The Commander in Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, was inviting George Bernard Shaw to...
Read moreWilliam Orpen: Ireland's War Artist
The newspaper announcement was made on 30 January 1917. The Irish artist William Orpen had been appointed an official war artist and...
Read moreThe Story of James Joyce’s ‘tiresome book’ – and it ain’t Ulysses!
On 1 January 1917, James Joyce in Zurich received a telegram. It confirmed that his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist...
Read moreThe West Awakes: The story of Mayo footballers & the 1916 All-Ireland final
This is an amended version of an article that was first published in The Irish Times on the All-Ireland football...
Read more‘Shot like a dog’: the murder of Francis Sheehy Skeffington and the search for truth
‘I wish to appear for myself, I am the father of the murdered man, Mr. Sheehy Skeffington’. J...
Read moreFEATURE: Tom Kettle’s words of war
‘Tom Kettle was horrified first by the Rising and then by the executions which followed the Rising. When he...
Read moreRoger Casement: 'High Treason' & the Politics of Hanging
The verdict was ‘High Treason’ and that was the title given to the painting depicting one of the...
Read moreThe Life & Legacy of Roger Casement
In the first week of August 1917, on the first anniversary of the execution of Roger Casement, commemorative events were held...
Read moreFrom Somme to Silver Tassie: Seán O’Casey & the Contested Legacy of 1916
In the final scene of Sean O’Casey’s play about 1916, The Plough and the Stars, two British...
Read moreA Somme Story – the last letters of Thomas Gordon Fitzpatrick
Late last year I sat with Belinda Curtis in her kitchen in Greystones, Co. Wicklow as she brought out three...
Read moreHere comes the summer: how Daylight Saving Time came to Ireland
Daylight Saving, or Summer Time, was introduced in Great Britain and Ireland on 21 May 1916. The Irish daily newspapers published articles...
Read moreThe Lady and the V.C.
By Ed Mulhall The lady is writing at her desk. The April sun is framing her through the drawing room...
Read morePearse’s Christmas Ghosts, 1915
‘Here be ghosts that I have raised this Christmas tide, ghosts of dead men that have bequeathed a trust...
Read moreCarson, Redmond, the Coalition and the War, 1915
When Unionist leader Edward Carson rose to speak to a packed House of Commons on 2 November 1915 he was breaking an...
Read moreANALYSIS: Who were the Irish Anzacs at Gallipoli?
It has been estimated that some 6,600 Irish born men and women served in the Australian Imperial Force during World War...
Read moreHow Leix Won the All-Ireland Hurling Championship of 1915
By Dr. Paul Rouse On Saturday night, 24 October 1915, a group of about 25 men from Queen’s County stayed in...
Read morePreparing to speak to history
By Ed Mulhall Speaking to history on two occasions Padraig Pearse stood to deliver key statements of Irish Revolution. On...
Read morePacificism or Physical Force?
By Ed Mulhall It was a direct challenge. A plea. It was sent by one activist and idealist to another....
Read moreThe Plunkett-Casement 'Ireland report': what was it and why does it matter?
by John Gibney Introduction The 'Ireland report' was composed at some point in April-May 1915; it was a hypothetical plan for...
Read moreIreland’s Lord Lieutenant: ‘a fount of all that is slimy in our national life’
By Mark Duncan The inauguration of a new Lord Lieutenant for Ireland was an occasion for pomp and ceremony. In...
Read more'Common Sense' and the War: George Bernard Shaw in 1914
By Ed Mulhall By the winter of 1913 George Bernard Shaw was at the height of his creative powers as a...
Read moreShadow Soldiers Flickering on a Screen: Irish Cinema and the Beginning of World War I
“It is ever so much more a patriotic thing to go down the quays and give the soldiers a...
Read more'…in comradeship with our brethren in the North, we will ourselves defend'
By Ed Mulhall On the afternoon of Monday, August 3rd 1914, Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs...
Read morePunching the Wind: Captain Jack White, the misfit of the Irish Revolution
By Ed Mulhall The withdrawal by An Post of the commemorative stamp for the Citizen Army, because of the misidentification...
Read moreA Poet Discouraged - Yeats, 1913
By Ed Mulhall In October 1913, W. B. Yeats published privately through his sisters’ Cuala Press 50 copies of Poems Written...
Read moreKilkenny: the making of a hurling tradition
By Mark Duncan By 1913, the sight of Kilkenny teams winning All-Ireland hurling titles had become a familiar one. Success was...
Read moreFrom Celtic Twilight to Revolutionary Dawn
By Ed Mulhall The July 1913 edition of The Irish Review, a monthly magazine of Irish Literature, Art and Science, leads...
Read moreJames Plunkett, RTÉ and Strumpet City
by Ed Mulhall Strumpet City by James Plunkett returned to No 1 on the Irish bestsellers’ last April after being...
Read moreThe international story of the women’s suffrage movement
In 1867 the all-male British House of Commons rejected John Stuart Mill’s amendment to the Franchise Reform Bill to...
Read moreCentury Ireland
The Century Ireland project is an online historical newspaper that tells the story of the events of Irish life a century ago.