Established in 1993 and now published every two months, each issue of History Ireland features  a wide variety of topics, from the earliest times to the present day, giving a sense of the distant past while offering a contemporary edge. Every article is illustrated with photographs, maps or paintings to provide a vivid impression of the topic.  

History Ireland January/February 2026

 Volume 34 No. 1

REGULARS

From the Editor

HISTORY IN THE NEWS:

Protestants petition to end insult to Catholics

Brian Trench

Charles Campbell—the man who discovered Newgrange

Aisling Heffernan

ON THIS DAY

Aodhán Crealey

BITE-SIZED HISTORY

Donal Fallon

LETTERS

Connolly’s other sister

Dev’s paternity

Devoy’s chair; John Boyle O’Reilly’s birthplace

Four Courts Marshalsea

The other Balfour Declaration

War and genocide

PLATFORM:

Ireland and the emerging English Atlantic empire in the seventeenth century

Micheál Ó Siochrú

ARTEFACTS:

The Irish Catholic Brigade in British service

Stephen McGarry

GEMS OF ARCHITECTURE:

St Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare

Damian Murphy

KINDRED LINES:

Local government electoral rolls

Fiona Fitzsimons

IFI FILM EYE:

Flora Kerrigan—Dream Maker

Sarah Arnold and Kasandra O’Connell

LOCAL ARCHIVES:

The Forster and Kelly papers, Porte House, Ruan, Co. Clare

Ciara Fahy

100 YEARS AGO:

2RN and RTÉ

Joseph E.A. Connell Jr

REVIEWS

SEEN ON TV:

House of Guinness

Sylvie Kleinman

WHAT’S ON FILM:

Palestine 36

Brian Hanley

MUSEUM EYE:

Picasso: From the Studio, National Gallery of Ireland

Donal Fallon

Bookworm

Daragh Fitzgerald

The Big Book

Gleeson, Landscapes of kingship in early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1150

By Simon Egan

Book Reviews

Brady and Ferguson, Ireland: mapping the island

By Thomas O’Loughlin

Keenaghan and Scully, That beats Banagher! A humorous expression of amazement: origin and legend

By Eileen Casey

MacIntyre, An accidental villain: Sir Hugh Tudor, Churchill’s enforcer in revolutionary Ireland

By Eamonn Gardiner

Hennessy, Edinburgh’s first Hibernian: the mission of Edward Joseph Hannan

By Niall Whelehan

FEATURES

REPUTATIONS:

Pamela in exile

Marie Stamp

FAMINE:

Gadugi—the Cherokee gift to Ireland in 1847

Christine Kinealy

TALES FROM THE GRAVE:

John Philpott Curran’s reinterment in Prospect Cemetery, 1837

Brian Casey

MILITARY:

Eugene ‘Hassan Bey’ O’Reilly Gerard Ronan

PENOLOGY:

The architecture of constraint—prison archives in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Brett Irwin

SPORT:

The origins of Irish road bowling

Fintan Lane

IRISH ABROAD:

From Cork to Karinhall—a pre-war visit to the fabled Nazi mansion in 1937

Pat Poland

ANTI-FASCISM:

‘An insolent clique’—‘antifa’ IRA in the 1940s

John Mulqueen and Fergus Whelan

MEDIA:

The Welsh language’s debt to early Irish broadcasting

Andy Bell