I am so at home in Dublin, more than any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me. It took me years to see through its soft charm to its bitter prickly kernel - which I quite like too.

Home Issue 79, June 2016

Issue 79, June 2016

Dissenting Radical

Archibald Hamilton Rowan was viewed by both the authorities and his fellow members of the United Irishman as its leading light but his name has faded from memory compared with those of Tone or Emmet as he spent the most dramatic years of revolutionary activity in exile.

The Empire Strikes Back

Roger Casement wanted a free Ireland restored to the nations of Europe but he passionately wanted something else, something which he was unusually placed to understand, the dismemberment of the British empire. Captured and tried, he was unlikely to be forgiven.

Here I Stand

Martin Luther believed the papacy to be one of the great human agencies through which Satan operated on earth. This goes a long way to explaining the virulence of his polemic against the Catholic church, which still has the power to cause some offence.

The Pope’s Divisions

By the early seventh century, the Roman church was the cultural mortar of western European society. It became the single institution that cut across political boundaries and ethnic divisions, collecting taxes, administering justice and enjoying the power of life and death over its members.

Your language or mine?

A language, it has been said, is a dialect with an army, or at the least one with a regional assembly. A new study, which seeks to identify patterns of ecological constraints operating on the circulation of literary texts, suggests that a “language is a dialect with a literature”.

Not Our Fault

A senior official of Ireland’s Department of Finance concludes that all the officials he worked with in the run-up to the country’s economic collapse were dedicated, hard-working and of the highest intellectual ability. If this were the case why did they not see the crisis coming?

Gypsy Dancer

Johann Trollman was a gifted athlete who floated like a butterfly through German boxing bouts in the 1930s. But he was a member of the Sinti community, operating in a sport the Nazis considered a forum for the display of essential Aryan values. He could not be allowed to win.

Meet the Folks

The term ‘Celts’ has been used for 2,500 years and has changed its meaning many times. Though a cultural construct, it continues to strike a chord both nationally and globally among the populations of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and in their diaspora communities around the world.

Response to James Moran

A reader takes issue with remarks on Donald Trump and his politics included in the essay ‘We Know Nothing’ published in the May issue.

Brexit: 1649 or 1688?

A review of the Brexit debate as reflected in the pages of the Guardian newspaper from May 1st, 2016