A contribution to The Irish Story, published 27th June 2016.     In most accounts of the events leading to the foundation of the Irish Free State, Rory O’Connor remains best known for his controversial leadership of the anti-Treaty IRA faction in 1922, at the outset of what became known…

  ‘Muriel MacDonagh: Tragic Death of a 1916 Widow’, a contribution to Time & Tide No. 10, published by Skerries Historical Society, Dublin (2016). Time & Tide, Volume 10, published October 2016, contains ten local history papers which were presented at the Skerries Historical Society monthly meetings. Thanks to the…

Arthur Griffith, Sinn Féin & 1916, Irish Independent (online edition), published 9th March 2016.   The Easter Rising was popularly termed the ‘Sinn Féin Rebellion’ but what was the real role of the party and its leader Arthur Griffith? The party, in fact, would have gradually faded away had the…

Travelling the Same Road? Arthur Griffith & The IRB, pre-1916, The Irish Story, published 11th October 2015.   Gerard Shannon on Arthur Griffith’s long and often tortuous relationship with the Irish Republican Brotherhood up to 1916. By 1905, the journalist and radical Irish separatist Arthur Griffith was keen to use…

The Sinn Féin Rebellion? Arthur Griffith’s Easter Week 1916, The Irish Story, published 5th April 2015. ‘The Sinn Féin Rebellion’ became a popular, though paradoxical, term given to the 1916 Easter Rising during its aftermath. A commemorative photographic album published by the Irish Times after the insurrection is one such…