January, 2016

  I see this there’s a whole new survey directed soley at me ,just in time to start the new year on the right foot. The UK government has finally tracked me down and found me huddled in a dimly -lit corner, sipping my third glass of Malbec by candlelight.Their officials have grabbed me by […]

  Yesterday on Talkback, Mike Nesbitt, leader of the UUP stated that the Easter Rising gave rise to the partition of Ireland. This revisionist mentality air-brushes the facts and context of the times – it’s a massive over simplification that is ignorant and oblivious to the truth. I have blogged on this before and the […]

  Yeats’s Easter 1916 – and why Maud Gonne was not impressed Letters to the Editor PUBLISHED08/01/2016 | 02:30 Maud Gonne was loved by Yeats WB Yeats’s iconic poem ‘Easter 1916’ will feature widely during this centenary year of the Easter Rising.  It is a many-layered work, but is essentially a love poem to Maud Gonne, whom […]

They say self-praise is no praise at all. Under that dictum, An Garda Siochana recently spent considerable time engaged in a futile exercise. Which was? Displaying to the TV-viewing public a large arsenal of arms which they have unearthed. These, they said belonged to dissident republicans. They included “a Beer Keg Bomb, Mortars, Sniper Rifles, […]

OK –  sit up straight and listen. I’m truly pleased to see vigorous discussion of different blogs, including the points made by those I’d disagree with (maybe especially by those I’d disagree with).  But can we perhaps pull back on name-calling or even coarseness. Calling someone a ‘tube’, or using the word ‘fuck’ when another […]

A few weeks ago I was in The British Newspaper Library . I located a long interview given by my grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, to the  Cork Examiner in 1910 on the aims and policy of the Association of Secondary Teachers (Ireland) of which he was a founding member in 1909 and first President. I then […]

Ian Paisley despised the Catholic Church, often professing his belief that the pope was the anti-Christ. Yet he had no problem helping Catholic constituents, viewing it instead as an opportunity to show good will and possibly hoping at some point they might see the error of their ways and convert from an otherwise direct path […]

Paddy Doherty devoted  a lifetime of service to the people of Derry and beyond in the West Indies and Latin America.   His contribution to the early  credit union movement  has made life immensely better for individuals, families and communities not just in his native Derry but across the whole of the island. Leadership was called […]

I’m indebted to your correspondent Patsy McGarry (Jan 4) for telling me that the word “commemoration” originated in English in the 14th century, that it derives from Latin and means “to call to mind.” As used by Mr McGarry, alas, it is a clarion call to mindlessness. For he asserts that the 1916 Battle of […]

  (Previous article: “All changed, changed utterly, the Easter Rising was born.” (Part 3))   During Holy Week 1916, the seven-man IRB Military Council met to finalise plans for the Rising and draft the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. It is believed the literary composition, both expressive and heroic, is largely the work of Patrick […]