Irish History Podcast

In the opening line of his novel The Go Between the writer L.P. Hartley famously quipped ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’. For me history is about attempting to visit…

'Letters from Dakota' is the story of my grandaunt Mollie Dwyer who emigrated to the USA when she was 15 years of age in 1906. Her emigrant experience was very different to most. Within two months sh…

I launched my first exclusive patron’s podcast on the Land War yesterday.The Land War is a fascinating struggle between Irish landlords and tenants between 1879 and 1882.

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The Phoenix Park Murders are one of the most famous assassinations in Irish History. On May 6th 1882 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke were killed in brutal circumstances in the Phoenix…

The Phoenix Park Murders are among the most famous political assassinations in Irish History. On May 6th 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish the new chief secretary for Ireland was assassinated in the Pho…

In this episode I took my recorder and headed around my neighbourhood looking for the history of the Great Famine. Unsurprisingly I didn't have to travel far. With the Women's prison, the North Dubli…

In this final episode on the Maamtrasna murders, we begin by picking up the story of this fascinating murder case in December 1882. Eight men have been sentenced to die in Galway Jail on December the…

In Part I of this series on the Maamtrasna murders I looked at one of the most brutal killings in 19th century Ireland when the Joyce family were attacked in their remote home in Maamtrasna on the Ma…

Prior to 1882, Maamtrasna a remote townland in the west of Ireland, was known to few outside Co. Galway. That all changed on the night of August 17th 1882 when one of the most brutal murders in 19th …

Medieval outlaws have captured the human imagination for centuries. The story of Robin Hood who famously robbed from the rich to give to the poor has proved the most enduring. However most were ruthl…

This podcast was funded by the Mary Raftery Journalism Fund.

We don’t remember 1980s fondly in Ireland. Emigration and recession were features of life. The political atmosphere was defined by divisive…

In November 1867 tension and fear gripped the city of Manchester. A regiment of the British Army was drafted in to support a police force already bolstered by an extra 2,000 recruits.

With the most co…

The Fatal Feuds series has tracked the dramatic rise of the de Burgh Lords of the West and Earls of Ulster - the most powerful family in Medieval Irish history.

In 1326 the family Patriarch, the Red E…

TV series like Downton Abbey offer a sensationalised view of life in Stately Homes but what was it really like? This podcast uses the never before published words of Florence Doreen Wandesforde who w…

The show picks up the story of the de Burgh family in August 1316 as the biggest battle in medieval Irish history approaches. The De Burghs have paid an huge ransom to free their best battle commande…

In 1296 King Edward I of England invaded Scotland. During this campaign he removed the Stone of Destiny (a.k.a. The Stone of Scone) bringing it back to England. The removal of the stone which had bee…

The third part of the mini-series Fatal Feuds focuses on the Bruce Invasion of Ireland in 1315. This sees the famous Scottish King Robert the Bruce wage war on his father-in-law the Red Earl of Ulste…

The Red Wedding is an infamous chapter in the Game of Thrones series. It saw one family wipe out their rivals in a treacherous and brutal massacre. In this podcast I look at a comparable event from I…

This show picks up the story of Richard de Burgh, the Red Earl of Ulster at Christmas 1294. At the end of Fatal Feuds Part I he had been kidnapped & imprisoned in Lea castle by his rival John Fitztho…

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