‘Where sea water meets the Spotted fields, a young Kurdish arm would neverUnhook the window handle to admit the openingfragrance of honeysuckle. Our Wexford peoplewould never eat our strawberries, drink our tea.’ ~ ‘Our…

A fifteen-minute drive from Fishguard/Goodwick Port Dyffryn Fernant lies at the end of a narrow lane where hedgerows are spangled with rose-red campion and cow parsley. This six-acre garden is tucked neatly into the Preseli uplands; the Irish Sea is…

Medievalist Daryl Hendley Rooney from Trinity College Dublin talks about the famous churchman, scholar and historian Gerald of Wales (c.1146–1223) and his upbringing at Manorbier Castle in Pembrokeshire. He discusses Gerald's mixed Norman and Welsh…

Travel is often eventful and never without risks. One hundred years ago the mail boat and train service between Dublin and London Euston was the critical travel infrastructure supporting the Anglo-Irish treaty negotiations. On the morning of 3rd…

The school book for Newtown in County Tipperary contains the tale of Petticoat Loose, a woman spirit or revenant thought to haunt certain places across the southern half of Ireland. The tales, although diverse, detail her evil deeds, confrontation…

In the school book for Wexford town, gathered by teacher Victoria M. Sherwood, we find this transcribed clipping from the Wexford Free Press paper, describing the origins of the magpie in Ireland: It is said that the first magpies that came to…

Nearly 5,000 slaving expeditions left Liverpool between the 1690s and the closure of the British slave trade in 1807. The scale and duration of the trade was such that it could not fail to affect ports and their hinterlands on both sides of the…

Tethered, tossed and twinkling,A beckoning beacon between bar and bull,Paving pathways in a bending bay of swirlingsurf and smiling shores.Invitation to our harbour of doubtFailte, céad mile, come surge like a stormin our settling stout. Tested in…

Recently my sister Karen and I discussed our memories of visits to Ireland as children - we would go most years to visit Mum’s side of the family in West Cork. Before budget airlines shortened and cheapened the trips, Dad would drive the car from…

Much has been written on the sense of displacement that stems from the diasporic experience. Growing up in Britain with a firm sense of Irishness, identity has always resided in something of a halfway-house. In Britain, you’re part of ‘that Irish…