An unrealistic understanding of the past can lead popular opinion and politicians into tragic errors. The historian Felix Larkin has recently published a collection of essays, entitled “Living With History,” which deals with the use and abuse of historical commemorations — and of...
Ireland was a laboratory for every manner of colonial repression by the British. A hundred years after the Easter Rebellion, it is once again—this time by banks. Standing on the front steps of Dublin’s general post office a century ago, the poet Padraig Pearse announced the Poblacht na...
Former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton argues that Ireland has done exceptionally well to develop critical masses of skilled people. In global terms, the pull of ever bigger cities seems inexorable. In 1970, a third of the world’s population lived in cities, while more than half do so today....
The centenary of Ireland’s achievement of Home Rule deserves to be remembered. I greatly enjoyed reading Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922 by Ronan Fanning, a former professor of history at University College, Dublin.He demonstrates the huge difficulties that had to...
