Search Results for 'Mary J Murphy'

Award-winning New York show The Bark and the Tree will receive its Irish premier in Headford on Saturday September 6 at 9pm.

Galway’s Oscar Wilde Festival returns for its second year on the weekend of September 5 to 7, the festival will provide a host of insights into Wilde’s life and work with speakers from Galway, the UK, and the US as well as supporting new Irish writing inspired by Wilde.

More than 50 hardy souls gathered in Donaghpatrick graveyard in Caherlistrane last week (April 17) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Achill’s Eva O’Flaherty, born just across the fields from her final resting place in Lisdonagh House in 1874.

Despite Liam Mellows and his men answering the call to arms, and for five days to have caused mayhem in the Oranmore and Athenry areas, Galway was slow to realise that the Easter Rising 1916 was to be a permanent affair. The town was known as a ‘showneen town’, that is a town with a close allegiance to the British way of doing things. This was mainly because of the status of having a major army barracks on its doorstep. The army was an important purchaser of supplies from the town merchants; and many local people were soldiers, or had husbands or boyfriends who were in the army.

A new book, charting the life and times of the 19th century Irish aristocrat and businesswoman Eva O’Flaherty, will be launched in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop tomorrow at 6pm.

A new book, charting the life and times of the 19th century Irish aristocrat and businesswoman Eva O’Flaherty, will be launched in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop tomorrow at 6pm.

THE IRISH cultural landscape towards the end of the 19th century was in a state of powerful transformation. While the period directly following the Act of Union in 1800 may have represented the best era of civil government in British/Irish history, it also saw Ireland being stripped of its political capital leaving it open to the economic failure that resulted in the Great Famine.

In 1968 MGM came to Galway to make a ‘swords and sandals’ epic film called Alfred the Great. A lot of preparatory work had gone into selecting three main locations in Kilchreest, Ross Lake, and Knockma, each of which encompassed 90 acres. A vast amount of money was spent on the exact replication of every aspect of the ninth century it depicted, turning some corners of County Galway into Wessex, including etching a 200-feet long white horse into the hill at Knockma.

I have often been intrigued by the stories of German spies parachuted into Ireland during World War II. It was quite an intriguing time. De Valera was anxious to steer the country in neutral waters, despite serious pressure from Britain and America to at least open our ports to the transatlantic convoys which were being hammered by German U-boats. The IRA and its sympathisers, were pro German to such an extent that Germany believed it could foster a lot of trouble in Britain’s ‘back yard’ by encouraging the IRA to make mischief.