June, 2016

  When President Obama stood outside the former Parliament House in Dublin’s College Green he made a speech which recalled the meeting of the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Irish leader Daniel O’Connell in 1845.  One would imagine, probably correctly,that not a single name of an Irish person previous to that 1945 […]

In recent days I’ve watched two MPs – both pro-Remain – being interviewed by  groups of carefully chosen panel of people made up of one-third Remain, one-third BREXIT and one-third Don’t-Knows.  One was hosted by the BBC and one with Sky News. In some ways the two political leaders were very similar; in other ways […]

  I know this reminds me of something but for the life of me I can’t think what…Still, terrific pic, eh? Especially when you click it and make it stand up straight.

  The July issue of HISTORY TODAY,the London monthly founded by the Irish charlatan and renegade  Brendan Bracken, *though no  less reliable for that,carries an intriguing article by Julie Peakman on the whores of Dublin in the 18th Century. It seems they came, not in single spies, or even in battalions, regiments or divisions, but in […]

  Being by nature of a modest disposition, I hesitate to trumpet success. But since the success of this site is in no small measure due to the several bloggers, the constant and sometimes hilarious comments (that’s you, Perkin…), I’m going to blow this horn for the past week. Maith sibh! – Well done, all! […]

( John Patton blogs at    phototilly.eu) Watching a Party Political broadcast by the Leave Campaign last week , I was reminded of Tom Lehrer’s quip that political satire became obsolete when Kissinger was the awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The imperative to vote ‘Leave’ in order to save the NHS was its message. This […]

.Now every right-thinking person can tell you that censorship as practised in Ireland when De Valera was in power was something awful.Not one in a hundred will tell you that censorship of publications in Ireland preceded Fianna Fail’s ac cession to power. Indeed Maurice Manning’s party introduced  legislation against indecent literature in the 1920s under which […]

In 1957 I revisited Cork with my father for the first time since I briefly holidayed with his parents there in 1945. We walked around some ofthat beautiful city and, by Blackrock Castle on the South Banks of the Lee he recalled hearing John Redmond’s brother William, alsoa “Nationalist” MP, extolling the virtues of the […]

The Belfast Welcome Organisation and DePaul (that’s presumably what once was the St Vincent de Paul charity organization) are launching a major campaign. No, Virginia, it’s not about getting the public to cough up some more money: it’s to get people to keep their hand away from their pockets. The next man or woman you find […]

In the early 1970s I read a book on the Blueshirts and felt when I’d finished it that I knew less about them than when I had started. Many of the movement’s stars were still alive and in good health when the book was published in 1970. The movement itself had been founded in 1932. […]