Ligatured to Contraction

Irish Catholicism: its Rise, Fall and (possible) Revival. Brief thoughts on a large question

G’wan the Normies!

Saving the Enlightenment

The Outsider

Hold Your Hour

The State of Us

Singing Ireland’s Song

One More to Go 

Ireland’s civil war and its impact on the patterns of 20th century politics

No Myth No Nation

A state will be at a loss if it doesn’t know where it came from.

Little Women and their Pa

Louisa May Alcott’s father was a man of advanced views, a deist, vegan and ‘transcendentalist’. But, as is often the case with those of a…

A Penny for their Thoughts

The liberal ‘Dublin Penny Journal’ and the conservative ‘Dublin University Magazine’, both published in the early 1830s, can be seen as Protestant responses to Catholic…

Man of Marble

From 1820 to 1850, the sculptor John Hogan’s most productive period, he was largely based in Rome. Yet despite living abroad he was without question,…

Against Pure Wool

In the midst of the January Uprising of 1863 in Poland, a Dublin grocer, Patrick McCabe Fay, donated money to a fund in support of…

Part of What They Are

Driven by its history, Britain is hurtling towards a hard Brexit, which is likely to be a quite unpleasant experience for our neighbours, and perhaps…

Lost Connections

Most groups wrongfooted by the advent of Irish independence in the 1920s have since made their peace with it: the state’s Protestant minority, Trinity College,…

The Coast of Bohemia

One result of living behind the wall of large states that stands between us and central Europe is the tendency to see our history as…

One Onion, Many Layers

Irish Catholic social elites, emerging confidently after the ebb of British anti-Catholicism in the nineteenth century, increasingly sent their children to schools, both in England…

History is to Blame

Samuel Pepys, an insider whom the Glorious Revolution made an outsider, was a brilliant administrator, a great observer and a fine writer, a humane and…

Strong Hand, Beloved Leader

A hoard of letters written by Germans to Hitler show a people keen to abdicate their responsibility and infantilise themselves, but they do not indicate…

INSURRECTIONISTS AND SKIRMISHERS

When you lose in politics there is a tendency for others ‑ particularly the young ‑ to question, if not denounce, your tactics. Notwithstanding the…

The Kids Are Alright

The story of Minnie with her heart “as big as a whale” is the old story of the beautiful and somewhat innocent young woman who…

This is my Letter to the World

Emily’s self-seclusion was in the family tradition, as was her feeling of superiority, which she expressed in her inimitable manner. At a dinner during her…

A Moocow Coming Down Along the Road

John Stanislaus Joyce started out with around £1,000 in capital and numerous family connections but fell through the net of middle class privilege, bringing his…

Light Thickens…

It seems, to the mild irritation of both Prussian sages, that the women in the Marx and Engels households went into collective mourning following the…

Fallen Skies

Social partnership has been the only real government achievement of recent times and even this can be read – particularly under Ahern – as an…

History Is To Blame

Bridges From The Past

The Politics of Assimilation