While the pace of publication here has slowed it’s not from lack of writing. Rather, some of the pieces that began life as potential posts here have ended up in the pages (print and digital) of the Irish Examiner. I’m particularly proud of this one, written up to coincide with International Women’s Day. It was inspired by one of my female farming ancestors, my great grandmother Ellen Connolly, aka Ella Collins, aka “Granny Coll” to my mother and her siblings….
As we celebrate fifty shades of green and celebrate the most famous of Ireland’s patron saints, it seems only fitting to go back and look at what we know about Patrick himself. Stripping away centuries of myth and miracle, shamrock teachings and banishings of snakes, we can look at him through the lens of his own writings. They are the earliest extant texts from Ireland and there are two: His Confession, and a letter he wrote excoriating the soldiers of…
Wilderness Ireland tells us that on a clear night you can see over 4,000 twinkling stars, planets such as Venus or Jupiter and even meteor showers with the unaided eye. Such viewpoints are up to 40 times darker without the intrusion of city lights. But we must not take this celestial joy for granted, as scientists warn that by the time a child born today reaches adulthood, they will see fewer than half the stars visible to them today. These…
This is one of the most important projects I’ve worked on, probably ever, and it was certainly one where we couldn’t afford to get something wrong in tone or treatment. Bessborough was one of the most notorious mother and baby homes – where hundreds of children died over nearly 80 years, and where the resting places of 859 have never been found – and is in the Examiner’s heartland. This page was planned about a week in advance of the publication of a government commission into…