It was a lovely spring morning in the foothills of the Knockmealdown Mountains in southern County Tipperary on April 10, 1923. Six members of the Irish Republican Army, then engaged in the Irish Civil War against the Free State…

By Joseph Gannon

Many men become known as heroes for their bravery in battle, for their willingness to face death in an effort to kill the enemy and obtain an objective, or for helping win the war for their country.

They are often celebrated by millions of their countrymen and…

It was a sunny, hot September afternoon in 1887 at the South End Grounds baseball stadium in Boston. Mike “King” Kelly, the player-manager of the Boston Beaneaters, sitting on the bench, wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve as he watched his pitcher,…

DOMHNAIGH  -- On November 8, 1987, in one of the most widely condemned actions of the "Troubles," an IRA bomb killed 11 at the annual Remembrance Day…

Overshadowed by both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, John Major rarely features in Irish historical memory. Yet his patient diplomacy, partnership with Albert Reynolds, and willingness to challenge old assumptions helped create the conditions that made peace possible. The Good Friday Agreement may have been…

Che Guevara was born in Argentina, radicalised by Latin America and immortalised by the Cuban Revolution. Yet Ireland has spent decades claiming him as one of its own. The persistence of the "Galway Che" tells us less about Argentine history than it does about the Irish habit of discovering ourselves in other people's…

Shane MacGowan is usually remembered as the musician who fused Irish traditional music with the energy of punk rock. Yet the deeper influence on his work was not punk at all, but the literary inheritance of Brendan Behan. Through songs of emigrants, outsiders and dreamers, MacGowan became one of the last great voices in a tradition…

From the rain-soaked streets of Soho to the haunted dreamscapes of Irish history, Shane MacGowan's finest songs reveal a writer caught between intimate realism and mythic memory. Through the ghostly presence of James Clarence Mangan, The Snake with Eyes of Garnet suggests that MacGowan was not merely a songwriter, but a participant in…

By Tim Flynn

Poet, professor, parliamentarian and soldier, Tom Kettle believed Ireland's future lay in Home Rule and European cooperation. His death at the Somme in 1916 marked not only the loss of a remarkable individual but the eclipse of an entire political tradition.

In the crowded landscape of Irish history,…

By Tim Flynn

Soldier, revolutionary, general and film pioneer, Emmet Dalton lived several lives in one. From the trenches of the Somme to the death of Michael Collins at Béal na Bláth and the creation of Ardmore Studios, few figures better illustrate the complexities of modern Irish history.

In the crowded gallery of…

By Tim Flynn

In June 1985, as Barry McGuigan…

Few songs are as deeply woven into Ireland's musical and historical imagination as The Galtee Mountain Boy. Written by Patsy O'Halloran and later carried around the world by Christy Moore, the ballad tells the story of a young republican volunteer swept up in the turbulence of revolution, guerrilla war and civil conflict. Moving from Cork…

The Irish Land War is usually remembered as a struggle between landlords and tenants, led by Charles Stewart Parnell and fought in the fields and villages of rural Ireland. Yet its methods tell a different story. Michael Davitt, the son of evicted Mayo tenants who came of age in the cotton mills of Lancashire, brought the techniques of…

By T.S. Flynn

W.B. Yeats spent much of his life mistrusting constitutional nationalism and the men who practised it. Yet the poet who mocked shopkeepers, doubted parliamentarians and wrestled with the legacy of 1916 ultimately found himself helping to build the institutions of the Irish Free State.

For a man who spent much…

As the brilliant rays of the morning sun began to flash off the whitewashed adobe wall in Santiago, Cuba, 30-year-old William Albert Charles Ryan reflected that it would be yet another beautiful day on the tropical island he had come to love. He could hear the sweet songs of a few…

The night of November 1, 1920, All Souls Night, was extremely cold in the west of County Waterford. The members of the West Waterford Volunteers flying column huddled along the road at Piltown Cross were not only shivering because of the temperature. Most of them were also trembling slightly as…