Search Results for 'British army'

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The boy from the Jes, who became the voice of Germany

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The late Billy Naughton, College Road, said he spluttered into his cup of tea, when he instantly recognised the upper-class, nasal drawl, of William Joyce reporting continuous Nazi victories on Radio Hamburg, Reichsrundfunk, during its English-language broadcast in October 1939. He was ridiculed as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ and was the butt of Musical Hall jokes, yet he was listened to and despised for his clever mix of fact and lies.

Horse trading in Eyre Square

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One of the earliest associations of Eyre Square with the horse was the jousting competitions that went on there in the middle ages. There were also horse fairs held in the Square where one could buy and sell horses, these were usually held outside the railings and on the streets. Before motorised machinery was invented, the horse provided people with their main type of transport: the work horse was an invaluable part of the farm used to pull the plough or haul the farmer and his cartload of produce into town. Horse racing was always a popular sport and the first Galway Horse Show was held in the Square in 1892.

O’Loughlin’s cavalry protected the king

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The arrival of British royalty on Irish shores in recent times, is usually greeted with genuine interest and curiosity, and a sense of welcome and respect, while extreme nationalists have to grin and bear it.

‘The peasantry are the foundation of the world - the upper classes get worn out’

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In the decades preceding the 1916 Rising, an extraordinary revolution had already taken place in rural Ireland. The British government had lost its patience with Irish landlords who owned 95 per cent of the land of Ireland (100 percent of county Galway was landlord owned), and had largely squandered their wealth leaving themselves vulnerable to poor harvests, successive seasons of bad weather, and an increasingly impoverished tenantry.

The decline of the flying column

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In the latest of our articles focusing on the War of Independence and Civil War in and around Athlone, we follow the declining fortunes of the Athlone Brigade’s flying column between October 1920 and February 1921.

One hundred years ago this week…

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John Henry Foley was one of the greatest artists this country produced in the 19th century. He was a world famous sculptor who was commissioned to produce many public works in different parts of the world including Galway. The statue he produced here was of Lord Dunkellin, a 2.5 metre high bronze on a polished Peterhead red granite base which stood on two steps of Aberdeen granite about 20 yards inside the main gate into the Square. ‘In none of the great works which have given him world-wide celebrity has he shown more genius and skill than in the present instance where, with only the slender assistance of a photograph, has he been able to produce the faithful likeness.’

A story of two fathers and two children

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The final chapter in the history of Shakespeare and Company, the famous Paris bookshop, began with the publication of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, in May 1939. The shop closed in December 1941 when a Nazi officer saw a copy of Joyce’s book in its window and asked to buy it. Sylvia Beach refused saying it was her only copy, and was not for sale. The officer threatened to return and confiscate her entire stock, and left. He returned the next day and demanded she sold him the book. Again Sylvia refused, and the officer, ‘trembling with rage’ warned that he would be back that afternoon and seize all her books.

Emotional occasion as military ceremony marks significant moment in history

RONAN FAGAN

Custume Barracks to mark centenary milestone with reflective military ceremony

RONAN FAGAN

‘There is a need for ordinary people to say what The Troubles were like’

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From the cages of Long Kesh in the 1970s, to the lecture halls and classrooms of NUI Galway this century, a love of writing and a passionate belief in the importance of education has been central in the life of Paddy McMenamin.

 

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