In November 1991, shortly after making an abortive effort to replace Charles Haughey as head of Fianna Fail, the chances of Albert Reynolds ever becoming Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland looked bleak indeed. From being Minister for Finance, arguably the most important position in the cabinet, he had been dispatched by Haughey to the backbenches where he seemed likely to … [Read more...] about Taking It To The Top: An Interview with An Taoiseach Albert Reynolds
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The Irish Experience in Australia
Thomas Keneally is widely-recognized for a wide body of work of a historical and political nature, including The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, which explores differences between the white and Aboriginal cultures. Confederates examined the consequences of the American Civil War on a group of individuals; Schindler's List looks at the Holocaust. And in To Asmara he focused on the … [Read more...] about The Irish Experience in Australia
1992 Yeats International Theatre Festival
By James W. Flannery, Director, W.B. Yeats Drama Foundation July August 1992
More than half a century after his death, William Butler Yeats is still Ireland's foremost avant-garde playwright. We return to his theatre work, in all it diversity and contradictions, not because we are sure of its place in the repertoire of modern Irish theatre, but because we are not. Yeats' plays are unsettled and unsettling, radically incomplete until methods of … [Read more...] about 1992 Yeats International Theatre Festival
Portrait of Joanna
By Evelyn Leahy Hankel July August 1992
1875 was a year of hardship for the Michael Noonans of County Tipperary. The small farm house near Strough in Lattin Parish harbored Michael, his wife, Ann Power, and the eight youngest of their twelve children. The four eldest, quite mature, had migrated to Australia and America. The eight young Noonans heard many tales from across the seas sent to the parents from their … [Read more...] about Portrait of Joanna
75th Anniversary of The Irish Uprising 1916
By Frank Shouldice April 1991
Easter 1916 and the Annals of Irish History Few events in Irish history have been as momentous as the 1916 Easter Rising. What started out as a minor and unpopular rebellion by about 1,200 men and women became the spark which led to three years of full-scale war with Britain. And the Treaty which ended the War of Independence in 1922 created its own monster: civil war and … [Read more...] about 75th Anniversary of The Irish Uprising 1916