Jan 25, 2023
Fighter pilots in World War One were the football celebrities of their day, their actions eagerly followed by millions of people in their homelands. The top three air aces in the war were Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock, James McCudden and George ‘McIrish’ McElroy. All three...
Apr 7, 2022
Listen to the podcast version of this story here. ***** Ernest Shackleton is one of the best-known names in the world of polar exploration. It wasn’t always like that. For a long time, he was a sort of afterthought, a division B ranker after heroes like...
Mar 8, 2022
The Wexford man was the United States’ first commissioned naval officer, as well as its first flag officer. On his watch, the US Navy converted 40 acres of Brooklyn into one of the world’s biggest shipyards. It stands next to the oldest park in Brooklyn, renamed...
Oct 4, 2021
A consideration of a work edited by Ann Saddlemeyer and published by Oxford University Press in 2011. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in the Irish Daily Mail in April 2011. The letters underline how Yeats was a lot weirder than most people think....
Oct 4, 2021
True love, abduction, betrayal, attempted murder, a wrathful father, an illegitimate child. With backdrops like Georgian Dublin, the craggy shores of County Clare and the remote hills of Tuscany, it plays out like a readymade movie. And to cap it all, the handsome...
