John Bulmer Hobson was born on 14 January 1883 in Belfast and died on 8 August 1969 in Castleconnell, County Limerick. Unusually for an Irish revolutionary he actually came from a Protestant family. His family were Quakers, which is a…
Tag: Irish republicanism
A Short Biography of John Bulmer Hobson:
Book Review: Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923
Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923 Maurice Walsh Faber & Faber So much has been published about the Irish revolutionary period (1910-1923) over the course of the last few years that one has to be selective about…
A Beginner’s Guide to the First Dáil
What? The first Dáil. OK, and again, what? “Dail”? No, “Dáil”, with a fada. That accent thingy? Yes. What does it do? It changes the pronunciation. And the correct pronunciation would be? Doyle. As in Mrs Doyle? From Father Ted?…
An answer to my question?
A few weeks ago I posed the question both here and on Twitter about what were the “six times [meaning six rebellions] during the last three hundred years” referred to on the 1916 Proclamation. I didn’t get any response. Having…
Book Review: Fatal Path by Ronan Fanning
This book was published last year to much acclaim. There were lots of complimentary reviews, and I’m not going to dissent here from the majority view. Ronan Fanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin and this…
Book Review: Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies
I bought this book on a whim, partly because I guessed (correctly) that it would have something in it about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is a casual interest of mine. Judging by what I’ve found on the internet, the book…
Significant Commas in Irish History
As well as teaching about Irish history, I teach English language and grammar, especially the written variety, which a lot of the time seems to mean teaching commas: where to put one, where not to put one, and why it…
Irish History Compressed’s Pinterest board on the Decade of Commemorations/Centenaries
There are so many images available online from the period 1912-1923 (the source of the ‘Decade of Commemorations/Centenaries’ I’ve written about before) that I decided to make a dedicated Pinterest board to store any that I find. Have a look, and if you like share and comment.
1984: UK Government considered repartition of Northern Ireland
Every January the British National Archives prompt a flurry of historical recollections and reflections when they release a tranche of previoulsy confidential government documents under the “thirty-year rule”. This year, 1984 comes under the spotlight, a year in which the…
My top books on Irish history
There are a lot of books on Irish history, and the current Decade of Commemoration has prompted a flood of new ones. Here’s my choice of a few of those that have been around for a while but are still…