The Northern Ireland ‘stamp war’, 1971–2

By Matin Modarressi To commemorate the semi-centenary of Northern Ireland, the UK government launched a four-month festival in Belfast’s Botanic Gardens known as ‘Ulster ’71’ and issued a set of […]

‘The Cliona, the Maev and the Macha, the pride of the Irish Navee’

A brief history of the Irish Naval Service. By Daire Brunicardi The naval provisions were an important part of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The British Admiralty was forceful in […]

Desmond Greaves’s formative years at the Birkenhead Institute, 1925–31

Doctus in se semper divitas habet. (School motto: ‘The learned man always has riches within himself’.)   By Michael Quinn Charles Desmond Greaves, the historian, poet, scientist, philosophical thinker and […]

Revisiting the demography of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Ireland

By Chris Colvin and Eoin McLaughlin The year 2020 witnessed the first major global pandemic in over a century. Policy-makers and analysts around the world scrambled to find meaningful historical […]

The Canadian trial of the century—the story of ‘cracked Shortis’ (1875–1941)

By Cian Manning On 14 February 1875 the wealthy couple Francis and Mary Shortis, of 31 The Mall, Waterford, became the parents of Francis Valentine Cuthbert Shortis, known as Valentine […]