It is St Patrick’s Day, and here in Scranton that is a huge deal. It is the closest that the Irish will ever get to Christmas. The Office US s6e19: St Patrick’s Day, Michael, NBC 2010
Ours is a city with an extraordinary tale to tell … 1916: a band of Irish rebels seized control of prominent buildings in Dublin … The Easter Uprising sent shockwaves through the Empire. Brendan O’Carroll: My Family at War, BBC 2016
$865 billion is the number for the total Irish debt. Ian R Crane, lecture Dublin 2011, ‘The Final Meltdown’
What we have in Ireland right now is occupation by stealth … achieved without a shot being fired. ibid.
I’m heading to Ireland to see how the country’s coping after virtually running out of money several years ago. I’m meeting young families who are facing homelessness and bankruptcy. Stacey Dooley Investigates: Coming Here Soon: Ireland, Lost and Leaving, W 2017
But for some their dream soon became a nightmare … Priory Hall, where the residents literally had to be evacuated from their own homes, they were so unsafe. ibid.
Now almost a third of my age group are unemployed. ibid.
A transcript of a document that officially legalised the invasion of Ireland by England’s Henry II 800 years ago. And the continued occupation of some of it ever since. A UN-style resolution of its day which carried papal approval for regime change, or the subjugation of one country by another. But word has it that this document is not all it seems … Its contents was open to interpretation … King Henry sexed up this bit of parchment. Document: A Laudable Invasion, BBC Radio 4 2007
Around 1,500 years ago during a period that we used to refer to as the Dark Ages, the Irish played a very different role. Back then, they were the Irish that brought civilisation of Britain. It’s an epic story of decline and renewal. Dan Snow, How the Celts Saved Britain I, BBC 2019
Ireland: one of the most profound social and cultural revolutions that Europe and Britain had ever seen. ibid.
Rome: They spread culture and learning across the known world. From the Red Sea to the Atlantic. ibid.
A tribal Ireland with many kingdom. It was a pagan land whose subsistence and wealth was measured in cattle … Hibernia: the land of winter … Ireland was a place of sacred trees and woods and lakes presided over by druids … a religion of animal and human sacrifice. ibid.
The druid religion had once extended right across western Europe. The Romans were so disturbed by it, they made it illegal on pain of death. ibid.
‘They saw Patrick as the deadly enemy.’ ibid. historian
Patrick was bringing Christianity in a spectacular way to storm yet another pagan stronghold. ibid.
Monasteries had sprung up across the land fostering literacy, technology and a new civilisation. Dan Snow, How the Celts Saved Britain II
They landed on the west coast of Scotland in 563 A.D. … The Irish kingdom of Dalriada straddled both sides of the Irish sea. ibid.
I’m on a journey around an exotic and beautiful land at the edge of Europe: I’m in Ireland … This island divided between two countries with an often troubled history. Ireland with Simon Reeve I, BBC 2019
Profound cultural change for an island that is generally considered to be overwhelmingly Catholic and conservative. ibid.
Ireland is very green … The Golden Vale was an area of fertile pasture spanning the counties of Limerick, Tipperary and Cork. ibid.
A million died, another million and a half migrated. ibid.
In rural Ireland, faith, belief and ancient legend are still vital to many. ibid.
I’m going to be travelling down the east coast to the great cities of Belfast and Dublin. And on to the south of Ireland … I’m here at the Giant’s Causeway, one of the wonders of the world. The columns here are the result of the ancient volcanic eruption. Ireland with Simon Reeve III, BBC 2019
A lot of these [walls] have actually gone up after the peace process began. ibid.
The rebels hoped to take advantage of the British army being distracted by the First World War. But the British government sent thousands of troops and heavy artillery into Dublin. ibid.
Ireland’s museums are rich with treasure, precious artefacts that connect this land to its ancient past. Some are iconic, others overlooked but each one has a story to tell and a unique past in Ireland’s history. Alice Roberts & Gavin Hughes, Ireland’s Treasures Uncovered, BBC 2020
That treasure is the Tara Broach: the broach is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland … The original Tara Broach was made hundreds of years after the Celts. ibid.
The Bann Disc: this dates from the first century A.D. ibid.
Ireland’s most famous golden treasure: it is the Broighter Hoard, made up of seven gold ornaments … discovered in 1896. ibid.
Ireland’s museums are filled with artefacts, treasures emblematic of the iron age. ibid.
The hoard contained not only the lunula but two gold sun discs pulled from a bog together in Coggalbeg back in 1945. The Coggalbeg hoard sheds new light on our bronze age ancestors. ibid.
The treasure is St Conall Cael’s bell and the shrine that held it. ibid.
Everybody’s heard of the Book of Kells … 680 dazzling pages of illustration and calligraphy. In Medieval Europe it illuminated the story of Christ. ibid.
Waterford’s greatest artefact: the Great Charter Roll. ibid.
During the sixteenth century, England began its brutal conquest of Ireland, and declared half a million acres of land in the north open to settlement. Under British colonial rule, the Irish were regarded as a lower species and naturally inferior. They were descendants of apes. Exterminate All the Brutes II: Who the Fuck is Columbus, HBO 2021
‘Between 1920 and 1922 Belfast is the most violent place in Ireland. It is really the epicentre of revolutionary violence. What we see again and again is violence in one part of Ireland leads to violence in another part.’ The Road to Partition s1e1, historian, BBC 2021
On 22 June 1921 King George V and Queen Mary arrived in Belfast for the first official opening of the Northern Ireland parliament. Fearful for their lives, they had come to a city scarred with sectarian division. The occasion marked the creation of the new state of Northern Ireland. ibid.
This is the story of the dramatic events that led to the partition of Ireland. A story that continues to reverberate to the present day. And dominate the relationship between the islands of Britain and Ireland. ibid.
For Britain, the loudest and most strident demands for self-determination came from very close to home, from a country that it had ruled for centuries: Ireland. Prior to the war, and in response to long-standing demands from Irish nationalists, Britain had been preparing to devolve some powers to a Dublin-based parliament, through so-called home-rule. But home-rule was fiercely resisted by Unionists, particularly in Belfast and large parts of Ulster, where for centuries the population had been impacted by migration from Scotland and England. ibid.
By the end of the nineteenth century Ulster’s distinctiveness was marked by its status as the most industrialised part of Ireland. ibid.
The outbreak of the First World War averted to threat of a violent confrontation between Ulster Unionists and the British government, and home rule was suspended. ibid.
Nine weeks after the Easter rising, on the western front the men of the 36th Division made a very different blood sacrifice. In July, during the first two days of fighting at the battle of the Somme, the Division suffered an appalling 5,500 casualties. Men fighting for Britain … ‘The battle of the Somme was absolute slaughter particularly for Ulster Unionists.’ ibid.
As Ireland went to the polls in December 1918, voters had a choice between Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliamentary Party, and between two radically different visions of Ireland’s future. ibid.
Both Unionists and Republicans would take advantage of another political force that emerged for the first time in 1918: Women. They had become more politically engaged before the war, and were voting now for the first time. They included the members of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council. ibid.
‘Sinn Fein took matters into their own hands and formed an independent though illegal parliament in Dublin … The Dail is rapidly backed by force which is known as the IRA.’ ibid.
Republicans in favour of taking up arms had already done so. On the same day as the Dail sat in Dublin for the first time, two members of the Irish Royal Constabulary were killed in an IRA ambush in County Tipperary. The first shots of the Irish War of Independence had been fired. ibid.
Lisburn: Loyalists went on the rampage in the town, looting and burning Catholic homes and businesses. ibid.
The deployment of the Black-and-Tans was to backfire, and their reputation for brutality and reprisal attacks on civilians and property intensified the conflict in the south, leading to international condemnation. ibid.
Despite the war of independence raging across the island, Unionists in the north continued to lay the foundations for a new state. ibid.