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Irish History
Charles Robert Maturin | Money and the Root of all Evil
'I cannot again appear before the public in so unseemly a character as that of a writer of romances, without regretting the necessity that compels me to it. Did my profession furnish me with the means of subsistence, I should hold myself…
Insertions Downstairs | J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man
Since first hitting the shelves in 1955, J.P Donleavy's cult classic The Ginger Man has sold more than 40 million copies. The hedonistic tale of American student Sebastian Dangerfield in Dublin city during the 1940's, it was described by…
Ernest Kavanagh | Ireland’s Revolutionary Caricaturist
Ernest Kavanagh was someone who contributed artistically to the era of revolution in Ireland but in our history he has unfortunately been lost among names such as Pearse and Connolly.
Born in Dublin city in 1884, young Ernest received…
The Liffey Swim and Jack Butler Yeats | Ireland’s First Olympic Medalist
The first Olympic medal won by the Irish Free State was a silver medal in 1924, awarded Jack Butler Yeats for his 1923 painting The Liffey Swim. That may seem surprising today, however between 1912 and 1948 the arts took pride of place…
The Other Irish Connection | Barack Obama and Daniel O’Connell
‘Race,’ President Obama said in his farewell address, ‘remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.’ ‘You never really know a person,’ he said, quoting Atticus Finch, hero of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, ‘until you…
Ninette De Valois: The Godmother of Ballet
It is the year 1927 and I am sitting in the dark vestibule of the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. I am listening to a rich Irish voice that seems to intone a request that I should come to Dublin and produce for the Abbey Theatre. The voice…
Black immigration |The Lives and Travels of Thomas Awishee and John Jea
Thomas Awishee/ Osiat was born in the late seventeenth century, most likely in the Cape Coast, in what is present day Ghana. According to William Smith, surveyor for the Royal African Company in 1726, he was brought to Ireland as a child,…
Out of the Armchairs, Into the Seas
Next time you visit that fine institution that never succumbed to the vagaries of fashion: the Natural History Museum on Dublin’s Merrion Square take a look at the display cabinets that contain the marine exhibits.
Loiter around these…
Ireland’s Immigration History | The Many Lives of Sake Dean Mahomet
In 1784, at the age of twenty-five, a man named Sake Dean Mahomet sailed into Cork harbour with his patron, Godfrey Evans Baker. He left behind his life in India, (including fifteen years of service in the East India Company), and…
Ireland’s Immigration History| ‘The Black Siren’ of the 18th Century
Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, in March 1750. The playbill tells of a benefit concert organized "at the particular desire of persons of quality". The whole house is to be illuminated with wax lights, and the performance followed by a grand…