Irish History Podcast

This seven part series starting Monday August 17th, explores fascinating stories from a forgotten graveyard. Until 2010 Preban cemetery in Co Wicklow was completely overgrown and largely inaccessible. When the local community set about restoring their ...

During the Second World War Irish Military Intelligence stepped up their activities monitoring potential threats to the Irish state. Their targets included the family of the far right Irish American activist Aileen O’Brien. Through the course ...

Over the last few weeks I have been paralysed by writers block. In the hope of clearing my mind, I headed off to explore an old stately home. While often crumbling ruins, buildings like this are absorbing places - they were once the houses of ...

Ireland remained neutral in the Second World War. However by the summer of 1940 a German invasion seemed increasingly likely. Having conquered Western Europe the Nazis prepared Operation Sea Lion, an invasion of Britain which would inevitably have led ...

The diet of the rural poor in Ireland prior to the Famine is one of the most unusual in modern history. Adult males consumed as much as 14lb (6.35kg) of potatoes per day. Last week I tried this diet and in this podcast you find out what happened. The r...

This show look at a story related to the series Partisans. Its about the life of a Basque family briefly mentioned in that series - the Gallastegis - who moved to Ireland in the aftermath of the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.&nbs...

Through the 18th and 19th century, large numbers of Irishmen served in the British Army. However there were also many Irishwomen whose lives were interwoven with the military. While not soldiers they became part of the army through marriage to members ...

This is the final episode in the series Partisans. While the Spanish Civil War came to an end in 1939 and the Irish returned home for many Spaniards, Basques and Catalans the conflict would not end for decades. To conclude the series I interview the ex...

This podcast, the second last in Partisans, looks at the battle of the Ebro - the last major showdown in the Spanish Civil War. While the show looks at how the war ended for the Irish fighters, it also tackles one of the great mysteries of the Spanish ...

The enduring images of the Spanish Civil War depict armed fighters of one kind or another. This podcast, however, follows the story of a different Irish experience - that of Hannah Ormsby, an Irish nurse who arrived in Spain in the summer of 1937. The ...