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…

Mary Delany (1700-1788) was no stranger to crossing the Irish Sea. She had made one trip to Ireland as a young widow in 1731 and, when she later lived in Ireland between 1744 and 1767, she made regular visits back to England. Delany generally made…

When Mary Wollstonecraft crossed from Holyhead to Dublin – ‘the best and shortest passage’, she noted – in October 1786, she was lucky. ‘[T]he weather was fine the prospects delightful’, she wrote in a letter to Eliza Bishop, looking back on the…