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….
These pages from 2016 were a different sort of layout package to what I normally do. We had a report in from Women’s Aid on the number of women who had died violently in Ireland, looking back over the previous 20 years of the Femicide Watch Project – 209 at that point, with 131 killed in their own homes. It was grim reading. Our editor at the time, Allan, asked me if I could look at doing something different with…
It seems almost a lifetime ago, but in March 2016 Belgium was hit by bombings in Brussels Airport and on the metro. More than 35 people died, including three suicide bombers, while hundreds were injured. The trial only opened in December. We were going big on it. Europe was already on alert after the Paris attacks and the Bataclan theatre, and there was a definite sense of edginess. We knew Irish people had been in the area in Brussels, which…
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…