Ireland

The Flight of the Earls

The flight of the earls on September 4th, 1607, was the first of many departures from Ireland by native Irish over the following centuries.

Ireland at the Somme: A Tale of Two Divisions

John Horne asks why the heroic efforts of the two Irish divisions, the 16th (Irish) and the 36th (Ulster), in the bloody events on the Western Front in 1916, have been viewed so differently both at the time and since.

Sex, Scandal and the Supernatural

Peter Marshall explains how a chance reference in an old local history book led him to reconstruct the story of a 17th-century church scandal, and its afterlife in literature, culture and politics.

Davitt – Land Warrior

Kevin Haddick Flynn looks back at the life and times of radical Michael Davitt as Ireland remembers the centenary of his death on May 31st.

'Soldiers Are We': Women in the Irish Rising

Charles Townshend has read hundreds of 'witness statements' from the men and women who took part in the Easter Rising, made available to the public in 2003 after decades in a government vault.

A Young Nationalist in the Easter Rising

Anthony Fletcher uses the papers of his artistic great-aunt, who, as a young nationalist, wrote an eyewitness account of the Easter Rising, to explore her youthful patriotism and vigorous activism.

The Foundation of Sinn Fein

The organisation which would become the political arm of the Irish Republican Army was founded as a nationalist pressure group on November 28th, 1905.