Interview date: 1 September 2009
What book do you wish you had written?
J.H. Elliott, The Old World and the New (Cambridge a long time ago) - initially given as the Wiles Lectures in QUB.
What would you do if you were not a historian?
Make lots of money in business.
When was the last time you looked at wikipedia?
I have never looked at Wikipedia.
What event had the greatest impact on history in Ireland?
If by History you mean the writing of History I would say Read More
Interview date: 21 May 2009
What book do you wish you had written?
Any Harry Potter book. (Not that I’ve read them, so you know what I’m getting at.)
What would you do if you were not working for DIFP?
Teach history at second level or lecture perhaps, but I wouldn’t rule out escaping to the country and opening a rescue home for dogs.
When was the last time you looked at wikipedia?
Last week. (I’m not proud!)
What event had the greatest impact on history in Ireland?
Oh wow… that’s very broad! As a modernist, I guess I’d have to say the Civil War. Like a lot of people in Ireland, I have family members who fought on both sides Read More
Saturday
16:55 1989: Day by day, radio, BBC R2
19:30 More than museums: Poetry Ireland, radio, RTE R1
18.05 Pieces of the wall, radio, RTE R1
20.00 The day of the Kamikaze, tv, Channel 4.
20:05 The secret life of the berlin wall, tv, BBC2
21.15 The noughties… was that it?, tv, BBC3
21:30 Flags of our father, tv, RTE2
Sunday
13:30 A short history of Ireland Omnibus, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
16.30 Adventures in poetry, radio, BBC R4
16:55 1989: day by day, radio, BBC R4
19:00 Talking history, radio, Newstalk 106
21:00 Garrow’s law: tales from the Old Bailey (historical legal drama), tv, BBC1
22.00 Cerbh E (traditional influences), tv, TG4
23:00 1989: day by day omnibus, radio, BBC R4 Read more
By Kevin O’Sullivan
‘We’re better craic when we’re poor’. Des Bishop, who arrived in Ireland just after Italia 90 and is now unofficial ambassador for the Irish language, on Ireland, now and then. Bishop appeared on RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday morning to discuss the last twenty-five years of Ireland’s history, the period since Morning Ireland began broadcasting on 5 November 1984; an era in which that institution that for many has become, to echo the words of one of a special live audience, ‘part of my morning fix every day’.
The tone of yesterday’s anniversary programme was of a return to those (insert the opposite of halcyon) days of the mid-1980s. In the first hour Richard Downes interviewed Mary McAleese, who emphasised the importance of the peace process, having a positive mental attitude and cutting her salary, and left us with the image of her running after her husband and children in the Áras switching off the lights. Diarmaid Ferriter and Noel Dorr chatted about the events of 1984, the IRA attempt to murder Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton that occurred just before Morning Ireland’s first broadcasts, and the historic processes that followed and led eventually to the Good Friday agreement. But it was economics that dominated: Avoca (who came bearing cake) and Microsoft represented the business community; Ferriter and Dorr discussed social partnership and development, and the importance of striking a balance between the various elements of Irish society to overcome differences and inequality. Not all doom, but more than a little gloom. Read More
By Lisa Marie Griffith
The Irish Film Institute is hosting an evening 2 December to mark two important landmarks in the history of Irish Film. Irish Destiny, the 1926 love story set during the War of Independence, will be released on DVD.
The Irish Film Institute will also release their own DVD, Seoda. An integral part of the Irish Film Institute is the Irish Film Archive. The Institute’s mission statement for the archive is to acquire, preserve and make ‘available Ireland’s moving image heritage’, they work ‘to ensure Ireland’s rich and varied film history (both amateur and commercial) is protected and accessible, for the benefit of current and future generations’. As part of the ‘Reel Ireland initiative’ this year the institute toured Ireland and screening films from their archive. They also run film festivals and seasons to promote Irish films, historic documentaries and documentaries from history, as well as the archive itself. The archive also has a ‘paper collection’; documents relating to the history of Irish film which includes several significant collections from film companies and houses in Ireland. An invaluable archive for twentieth century social, economic and, cultural historians the archive is constantly acquiring reels and expanding their collection.
To mark this work on 2 December they are releasing Seoda, a collection of eleven short Irish films from the 1940s to the 1970s. The shorts deal with a broad range of topics such as ’health and hygiene, emigration, politics, savings and tourism.’ This will be a valuable addition to twentieth century history making ’reel’ history easily accessible for those who do not specialise in this field and it will be a useful tool for the classroom.
Both DVDs are now available at the Irish Film Institute bookshop.
Contributed by Edward Madigan.
We gave copies of Gerry Hunt’s graphic novel on 1916 ‘Blood Upon the Rose’ to a historian and a graphic artist to review. Edward Madigan, Centre for War Studies, Trinity College Dublin, takes the first half of this two-part review:
In the Ireland I grew up in boys’ comics were big business and those that specialised in historical war and violence were particularly popular. Yet virtually all the ones I remember were produced in Britain and featured English heroes and German villains. The stories that filled the pages of Victor, Hotspur, The Eagle, Battle Action, and Commando gave British and Irish boys a distinctly Anglo-centric version of British military history, and the Second World War in particular. Scottish and Welsh heroes, much less Irish ones, rarely got a look-in and any Irish schoolboys in search of a popular and dramatic account of Irish historical events had to make do with a dusty copy of Speeches from the Dock. Gerry Hunt’s Blood Upon the Rose, which focuses on the events of the Easter Rising, offers a valuable counter to this British dominance in ‘war in history’ comics available in Ireland.
From both a dramatic and historical point of view, Hunt’s narrative is quite simplistic. The rebel leaders and the rank-and-file volunteers are, to a man, brave, defiant and conscientious, while the British officers and men that oppose them are cold, cruel and ignorant. Ironically, given this black and white portrayal, both the rebels and the British soldiers appear to be wearing the same green uniforms, although in reality the British wore khaki and the relatively small number of rebels who donned uniforms on Easter Monday wore dark green. This is a relatively minor gripe, however, and despite the general simplicity of the narrative there is little for the historian to complain about in Blood Upon the Rose. Read more
Juliana Adelman This month the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland are holding their annual conference on ‘Ireland: city, town and village’, 13 and 14 November at the University of Ulster, Belfast campus. There’s a great line up of papers, check out the programme on our events page. The Blue Raincoat Theatre Company is staging an adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds in Sligo. Opera Ireland is offering Macbeth (Verdi) and Das Rheingold (Wagner) to stave off winter blues. And finally, October saw the 40th anniversary of Monty Python which is certainly an anniversary I think worth celebrating. Enjoy highlights on their youtube site. (And you can read Kevin’s piece on the proliferation of anniversaries, here.)
Lisa-Marie Griffith This is shameless self promotion but a project I have been working on for some time comes to fruition this month. The History of the City of Dublin Research Group (which was created to forward research on post-medeival Dublin and create a listings of those working on the city from 1500) will host it’s very first event this coming Thursday at Dublin City Library and Archives Pearse Street, a one day symposium focusing on the mayors of Dublin from 1500 entitled ‘Leaders of the city? The Dublin Mayoralty over Five Centuries’. Opening remarks will be made by Lord Mayor Emer Costello and the programme promises an iteresting day with lots of debate. This is a free event but you must pre-book.
Kevin O’Sullivan I’ve been reading a few interesting books recently: Facts are Subversive, a collection of Timothy Garton Ash’s writing – historical and political – from the past ten years; Richard Dowden’s Africa, a history/journalistic account of that continent’s mutilple contradictions; and the brilliant Philip Hoare book, Leviathan, or the Whale, which Juliana reviewed here. But my favourite discovery of the last month is the Antarctica Blog: a fascinating day-by-day account of the efforts of a team from the National History Museum in London to conserve artefacts from the explorer’s hut left behind by Captain Robert Falcon Scott (pictured above) in 1911 when he journeyed to the South Pole (with photos, anecdotes and assorted paraphernalia).
By Juliana Adelman
In March of 1916 Ota Benga (pictured left) went into a barn in Lynchburg, Virginia and shot himself. Twelve years prior Benga, an African Pygmy, had been brought to St Louis as part of an exhibition of races for the 1904 World’s Fair. Benga was suspended between cultures: he chose not to stay in the Congo when he was returned there in 1906 but neither did he manage to make America home. The Human Zoo: science’s dirty secret retrieves Benga’s story as part of a series on science and race being broadcast on Channel 4. The programme links the 1904 exhibition, and others like it, to the development of Adolf Hitler’s ideas about racial purity. The Human Zoo claims that exhibitions of so-called primitive races during the 19th and early 20th centuries contributed to persuading the millions of people who attended them that science had proven white superiority.
Human exhibits were common and popular during the 19th century and well into the 20th. In Dublin, the ‘Ioway Indians’ passed through in the 1830s and the zoo’s proprietors allowed them to keep the gate proceeds that their visit attracted. As The Human Zoo’s narrator points out, when travel was limited to the wealthy and adventurous, the only way to see different kinds of people was as at such a show.
Saturday
16:55 1989: Day by day, radio, BBC2
18:45 Kevin McCloud’s Grand Tour of Europe, (See Kevin’s review of the series, here), tv, Ch4
19:00 The Lyric feature: fifty years of music in Dublin (on the history of the National Concert Hall), RTE Lyric fm
19:30 More than museums: the Natural History Museum, radio, RTE1
20:30 Blitz: the bombing of Coventry, tv, BBC2
21:30 All the King’s Men (remake of 1949 film on US politics), RTE2, tv
Sunday
13:30 A short history of Ireland Omnibus, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
16:55 1989: day by day, radio, BBC4
17:00 1989: How the wall fell, radio, BBC4
19:00 The human zoo: science’s dirty secret (on exhibitions of people in the 19th and 20th C), tv, Ch4
19:00 Talking history, radio, Newstalk 106
21:00 Garrow’s law: tales from the Old Bailey (new historical legal drama), tv, BBC1
23:00 1989: day by day omnibus, radio, BBC Radio 4
Monday
14:20 Lost voices of World War I, tv, Ch4
15:45 A history of private life (see Lean’s review here), radio, BBC4
16:55 1989: day by day
21:00 The great escape: the reckoning (documentary on escape of 76 airmen from German POW camp, 1944)
Tuesday
15:45 A history of private life, radio, BBC4
16:55 1989: day by day, radio, BBC4
18:55 A short history of Ireland, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
20:15 Beyond the Berlin Wall, tv, RTE1
Wednesday
15:45 A history of private life, radio, BBC4
16:55 1989: day by day, radio, BBC4
18:55 A short history of Ireland, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
21:00 Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain, tv, BBC2
Thursday
5:45 A history of private life, radio, BBC4
16:55 1989: day by day, radio, BBC4
18:55 A short history of Ireland, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
19:30 A short history of Ireland omnibus, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
21:30 Cowboys (Fiachna O Broanain visits the Ok Corral), tv, TG4
Friday
5:45 A history of private life, radio, BBC4
16:55 1989: day by day, radio, BBC4
18:55 A short history of Ireland, radio, BBC Radio Ulster
20:30 The way we worked, tv, RTE1
20:30 Cowboys (documentary on Butch Cassidy, followed by the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), tv, TG4
By Juliana Adelman
Let’s start with the bad news. This whole revision business is tedious and frustrating. The good news is that you if you put your mind to it you will not only improve this (your first) book, but you will acquire skills that will stand you in good stead for future. Revising is effectively the same process no matter what type of prose you are looking at. This post is a kind of miscellany of tips and thoughts. I tried to organise them around themes, but it just didn’t work that well. So hopefully this won’t be too convoluted. For those of you who haven’t already read them, this post follows three others on a similar theme: part 1 (book proposals), part 2 (finding a publisher), part 3 (first revision steps).
Before you begin revising your chapters you probably need to read the whole dissertation, AGAIN. When reading your chapters try to consider how they fit into the whole. Do they support what you set out to do in the introduction and do they lead logically to the conclusion? Do they link one to another? Do you repeat yourself?
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