A grandmother’s letters, passed down through two generations, offer a fascinating, and at times intimate, glimpse into the period following the 1916 Rising. Dermot McEvoy talks to Rosemary Mahoney“My maternal grandmother, Julia Frances Rohan (née Fraher), and her five sisters who emigrated to Boston from Ballylanders, County Limerick, were fervid Sinn Féiners. My grandmother … [Read more...] about Dear Julia: Personal Reflections on 1916 and its Aftermath
April May 2016 Issue
The Rebel Path
Ernie O’Malley was a renowned figure in Ireland’s fight for independence. Here are his memories of 1916 as compiled by his son Cormac O’Malley.Born in 1897 in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ernie O’Malley’s (Malley) family moved to Dublin in 1906 where he went on to study medicine. During the Easter Rising O’Malley came to share the vision of the rebels, and left his medical studies in … [Read more...] about The Rebel Path
Ernie O’Malley’s Mayo
County Mayo is largely a rural, wild, untouched landscape on the west coast of Ireland, but it has changed drastically over the years. The images in Cormac O’Malley and Juliet Christy Barron’s new photographic collection Western Ways capture an unrecognizable Mayo through the lens of Irish Republican Ernie O’Malley and Helen Hooker, Cormac’s parents. ℘℘℘ In 1938, Ernie … [Read more...] about Ernie O’Malley’s Mayo
Thomas Meagher: The Immortal Irishman
In the following excerpt from Timothy Egan’s new book on Thomas Meagher, the legendary Irishman arrives in New York City having escaped from the Tasmanian prison colony where he had been banished for his part in the failed 1848 rebellion.He had seen half the world from a ship’s deck, and yet nothing prepared him for how many of the earth’s uprooted strivers had stuffed … [Read more...] about Thomas Meagher: The Immortal Irishman
A Q+A with Timothy Egan, Author of The Immortal Irishman
Timothy Egan (born November 8, 1954 in Seattle, Washington) has written eight books including the newly released Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero, about Thomas Francis Meagher. His book, The Worst Hard Time, about people who lived through the Great Depression’s Dust Bowl, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. A Pulitzer Prize- winning … [Read more...] about A Q+A with Timothy Egan, Author of The Immortal Irishman