Search Results for 'British Army'

There is often more drama in the board room of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, than what is presented on its stage. Following a famous conversation in Doorus House, Kinvara, one rainy afternoon in 1897, Lady Augusta Gregory of Coole Park, Edward Martyn of Ardrahan, and the young poet WB Yeats agreed to set up the Irish Literary Theatre. Theatre at the time was mainly influenced by the popular British music hall variety; and melodrama. It was agreed that day in Co Galway that the new Irish theatre would ‘embody and perpetuate Irish feeling, genius, and modes of thought’.

A brave Galway explorer who dared to venture into the harsh terrain of the Australian bush 150 years ago is to be honoured this weekend at City Hall and at the Galway City Museum.

Two Bennettsbridge men who have just celebrated their 90th birthdays recalled for me their involvement in what many people refer to as Dad’s Army, but which to them was a highly motivated force that stood between Ireland’s freedom and occupation by a foreign power.

GALWAY’S OWN Little John Nee returns to the Town Hall Theatre stage next week with Johnny Patterson, The Singing Irish Clown, staged by Barabbas. The play was written by Little John and features himself in the cast along with Roger Gregg and Bryan Burroughs.

It’s very hard to describe a true Irishman, without acknowledging that we all share a complicated inheritance. At no time was that complication more powerfully amplified than in the crisis of identity leading up to and during War World I. On the one side is the unionist image of Irish Protestants loyally, and exclusively, rallying to the Union Jack, and sealing that union with their blood; while on the other side, the Catholic and nationalist men and women, the people of the 1916 Rising, who represent the ‘true’ Ireland, in sharp contrast to the misguided Irishmen slaughtered in France on the altar of British imperialism.

TOMORROW, SATURDAY, and Sunday, the fabled Coole Park plays host to the 14th annual Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering which, as ever, features a top-notch array of speakers and performers coming together to celebrate Lady Gregory and her world.

The recently leaked list of members of the far right British National Party includes one member located in north Galway, it emerged last night.

Athlone has noted the passing this week of former mayor, trade unionist and champion of the working man, John “Joxer” Keenehan, who died suddenly on Tuesday at his residence in West Lodge.

The Irish Church Missions was the missionary wing of the United Church of England and Ireland. They were a very rich organisation and at the height of their endeavours, had an income of between £30,000 and £40,000 a year in this country alone. They first came to the west of Ireland, to Clifden, in 1849. Soon after a school was established in Galway, where a child might be given an evening meal and a night’s lodging after his attending a Bible class. They had two houses in Merchants Road, one named ‘The Dover School’.

ONE OF the darkest days of the Irish music scene occurred on July 31 1975 when three members of The Miami Showband band were killed by UVF paramilitaries at a fake army checkpoint outside Newry.