Feargal Cochrane— It is difficult to overstate the chaos, confusion and emotion that accompanied the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921. It was not a smooth transition. At the stroke of a political pen, a legal line was drawn across Ireland, separating six of Ulster’s nine northern counties from the
Harry Rée— What was it that made an Englishman want to parachute into occupied France, in civilian clothes? It was understandable for Frenchmen: they naturally wanted to get back home and more still to get away from the sickbed smell of the Français de Londres. But why should there have been
Dr. Toby Musgrave— Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) was only twenty-five years old when in 1768 he convinced both the prestigious Royal Society and the bureaucratic Admiralty that he should join HMS Endeavour as expedition natural historian. He personally paid a fortune to undertake the three-year voyage led by Lieutenant James
Susanna Braund— The Aeneid tells the story of the foundation of Rome by colonists from the East, refugees from the city of Troy in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) after it was sacked by the Greeks at the end of the ten-year Trojan War, an event to which scholars traditionally assign the
John Batchelor— Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865, the son of a highly skilled artist and sculptor, John Lockwood Kipling, and his wife Alice (nee Macdonald), who was the daughter of a celebrated Methodist. The Methodist background does not play a large part in Kipling’s life, but his
Stephen Taylor— The precise span of his long and turbulent life is a matter of some dispute. Some say he is to be seen as early as 1577, among the 166 seamen who circumnavigated the globe with Francis Drake on the Golden Hind. He was certainly recognizable by the 1650s
Michael O’Hanlon— On his trip to Europe in June of 2021, President Biden faced a question that he would likely have preferred to avoid: should Ukraine be invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and thereby receive a promise of mutual security from the United States as well as
Graham Seal— In the seventeenth century and long after, a lengthy ballad about the transportation of James Revel to Virginia was sold in the streets of Britain and the American colonies. In one version or another, it told the “sorrowful” tale of: … the Life of James Revel, the unhappy
David Dickson— High up on the venerable façade of Heuston railway station in Dublin one can just make out three coats of arms. They represent the cities of Cork, Limerick, and Dublin itself. That is probably the only place where the civic symbols of what were once Ireland’s three largest