A number of pavement lights on the streets of south central Dublin bear the name Hayward Brothers. They were produced by the same family which also gave us a noted Irish actor, singer and travel writer.

Is Thomas Davis on the way to becoming a forgotten hero, yet another of those monumental figures from the past which say to us ‘who is it now, who exactly was he?’

When an empire ends and a country becomes independent the imperial soldiers leave – but the visible heritage they have left behind is sometimes found to be disturbing or unacceptable.

The British knew quite a bit in advance about the intentions of the IRB before 1916. One of their most valuable informants was a man called ‘Redmond’.

Some sections of unionist opinion fought a rearguard action after Irish independence, though harassed by Sinn Fein in particular. God Save The Queen was sung at the horse show at the RDS even in the late 1940s.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu met the divil on the bus. Very freaky.

Less well known, but probably a better writer than Bram Stoker, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born two hundred years ago today.

Did Irish democracy develop in the 1920s in the early years of the new state or were it seeds sown a long time before?

James Clarence Mangan, a lad from the Liberties, went courting a posh girl up in Ranelagh. At first things seemed to be going well …

Ireland’s Huguenot community – originally Calvinist refugees from persecution in France, produced many notable Irishmen, including Tom Lefroy, the man Jane Austen had hoped to marry, and the Gothic novelist Charles Maturin, author of Melmoth the Wanderer.