Search Results for 'Winston Churchill'

The agricultural crisis of 1879, and growing civic unrest, prompted the Society of Friends in England to send James Hack Tuke to the west to inquire into conditions and to distribute relief. Tuke, the son of a well-to-do tea and coffee merchant family in York, England, published his observations in Irish Distress and its Remedies: A visit to Donegal and Connaught in the spring of 1880. In clear-cut language he highlighted the widespread distress and destitution at a time when the British government questioned the extent of the crisis.

Following his narrow escape from Republican forces, who were intent on killing him by the banks of the Liffey that cold night in January 1923, Oliver St John Gogarty wisely took himself off to London. He immediately became the toast of polite society there who delighted in his stories and witty conversation.

I am probably the worst kind of voter that the enthusiastic canvassers could meet. I do not vote for a party, but for a personality, or for a candidate whom I feel will do a good job. I admire politicians. I know that ninety-nine per cent of them are motivated by public service, and genuinely believe that they can effect change. Some of them actually succeed in bringing about change; but it is a long, hard slog.

Eamon De Valera and Winston Churchill were never friends. Famously de Valera had brilliantly defended Ireland's neutrality during World War II following a verbal broadside from Churchill. One can imagine that matters between the two leaders were cool to freezing.

Winston Churchill was 66 years of age when he became prime minister of Great Britain on May 10 1940. It was a moment of extreme crisis in Europe. Belgium, Holland and France were collapsing under the fierce onslaught of the German invasion. A large British army was retreating in the direction of Dunkirk. There was opposition within the government to Churchill.

The first winter of the war was unusually cold. Commander Bill King’s submarine Snapper served in the North Sea from April 1939 for 12 months. During that time it had numerous contact with enemy ships, mainly in the Skagerrat Strait, between the southeast coast of Norway and the southwest coast of Sweden.

Last Friday, September 21, Commander Bill King passed away surrounded by his adoring family at Oranmore Castle, aged 102 years. It is often said that a man was a legend in his life time, but no man truly deserved that accolade more than the late commander.

Last September I wrote a number of Diary entries on the wonderful reception that Galway extended to the survivors of the SS Athenia, torpedoed off the Donegal coast on September 3 1939, the very first day of the war. The ship was sunk by Fritz Julius Lemp, the commander of the U-30. The Athenia was obviously a passenger boat on its way with refugees from Europe to Canada. This wasn’t the start to the war that the German government wanted. Initially it denied that any of its submarines sank the Athenia, and suggested that it was sunk by the British on orders from Winston Churchill in the hope of getting America into the war.

It is a win that may mean different things to different people, but for the collective Connacht Rugby, it will go down in history.

On December 7 1941 Japan launched a devastating surprise attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbour. America declared war on Japan, and Germany declared war on the United States four days later. This was no longer just a war in Europe. It had leapt onto the worldwide stage