In June 2024 Connor Court Publishing published my latest book, Sister Liguori: The Nun Who Divided a Nation (ISBN: 9781923224063, Paperback 254 pages, RRP $34.95).
It is the true but amazing story of an Irish Catholic nun who in July 1920 fled her Wagga Wagga convent on a frosty winter’s night dressed only in her nightdress fearful she was about to be murdered by her mother superior.… Read the rest
In 2019 the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand held a conference in Adelaide on ‘Foregrounding Irish Women: the Antipodes and beyond’. The organisers of the conference have just published a book Irish Women in the Antipodes Foregrounded which includes several of the papers presented at the conference. One of the chapters is my paper entitled ‘More than Mannix: Irish-Australian women who helped defeat conscription in WW1’.… Read the rest
For Australians, 11 November is a date that resonates in our nation’s history. On that date in 1880 Ned Kelly was hanged, in 1918 it saw the end of the fighting on the Western Front, and in 1975 it was the day on which Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the prime minister, Gough Whitlam. This year marks the centenary of another momentous 11 November, a day unique in the annals of Australian political history.… Read the rest
The Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society (Vol. 40 2019, pp. 173–175) has published a review I wrote on Maureen McKeown’s The Extraordinary Case of Sr Liguori, Leo Press, Downpatrick, 2017. You can read the review here.… Read the rest
On 10 October 1918 RMS Leinster, the mailboat from Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) to Holyhead in Wales, was sunk by a German submarine UB-123 with the loss of 564 lives, the greatest loss of life in a single event in the Irish Sea. At the time the mail boat was carrying 803 persons – 75 crew, 22 postal sorters, 200 civilians and 506 military personnel.… Read the rest
In the early years of the Common-wealth Hugh Mahon was one of Australia’s most controversial politicians, both revered and reviled. He has the distinction of being the only member expelled from the Commonwealth parliament. That was in 1920 after he criticised British rule in Ireland, leading the prime minister WM Hughes to accuse him of “seditious and disloyal utterances”.… Read the rest
Next year the centenary of the Easter Rising will be marked by many commemorative events and the publication of articles and books on numerous aspects of this significant event in the history of modern Ireland. A book recently published depicts the life of a little known participant in the rising on the British side, Captain John Bowen-Colthurst, who was responsible for the murder of innocent civilians, including the well-known newspaper editor and Dublin eccentric Francis Sheehy-Skeffington.… Read the rest
The centenary of the start of the military phase of the Gallipoli campaign on 25 April 1915 will be well commemorated in Australia and New Zealand, as might be expected. Although many thousands of Irishmen served at Gallipoli and died there, the campaign is not well known in Ireland and has not been widely commemorated there. … Read the rest
I have just received a copy of a new eBook Ireland – in a new light by Chris Hill and Colin McCadden. Published by eBooks Ireland it is a most wonderful illustrated book that takes you on a virtual tour of Ireland. The images – 400 in all – are enchanting with an amazing depth of colour.… Read the rest
Sydney played host this weekend (23-25 August) to the 5th International Famine Commemoration, marking the occasion with a dinner, a seminar and the annual gathering at the monument to the Great Irish Famine in the grounds of the Hyde Park Barracks. Previously, the event has been held in Toronto (2009), New York (2010), Liverpool (2011) and Boston (2012).… Read the rest