Browsing Category
1750-1900
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Writer and Politician
Fame is a fleeting thing. Someone can be a celebrity in their own time but give it a few decades and if they’re remembered at all it’s usually only for a single aspect of their lives. Newton revolutionised mathematics and ran the Royal…
Tiger and Boyle Roche, Contrasting Irish Brothers
Nature versus nurture is one of the oldest debates there is. Are we predetermined to become who we become, or is it the world we encounter that shapes us into who we are? The story of David (”Tiger”) Roche and Boyle Roche seems almost…
Richard Dadd, Artist and Mentally Disturbed Killer
The cliched idea of the “thin line between genius and insanity” is one that has been discussed by both psychiatrists, cultural commentators and pop psychologists for decades. In one sense it’s an iteration of the “tortured artist”…
Gift of the Gavel | The Man Behind Cork’s Berwick Fountain
The Berwick fountain on Cork's Grand Parade is an iconic piece of street furniture on Leeside. The fountain was gifted to the city by (and named after) a Kildare man who died in a horrific accident 150 years ago.
Walter Berwick was born…
Hugh Glass, American Frontiersman and Survivor
The American frontier was a place of legends, tall tales and wild stories. But among these stories were true tales of extreme human endurance and courage in the face of extreme conditions. One such story became a legend in its own right,…
Fred and Maria Manning, a Murderous Married Couple
Marriage is a tricky business, even in a legal sense. Victorian law treated the wife as the servant of the husband, which among other things meant that a wife killing her husband was (up until 1828) actually guilty of “petty treason” and…
Charles-Henri Sanson, Royal Executioner
There’s nothing that epitomises the attitudes of pre-Revolutionary France quite like the job of executioner. The men in this job served the royal will, dealing out death and torture as decreed by the upper classes. Officially they were…
Elizabeth “Nellie Bly” Cochrane Seaman, Intrepid Journalist
“Journalism”, as a concept, is an entirely new development of the last several centuries. Before the printing press led to mass literacy and the desire for “news”, there was no need for people to go and find it out. Over time it evolved,…
Rethinking Climate Fiction | How two Indonesian volcanic eruptions shaped modern culture
In October 2016, Amitav Ghosh wrote a very long feature in the Guardian asking a very simple question: where is the fiction about climate change? In the years since, merely typing in “climate change fiction” brings up several helpful lists,…
John Tawell, Forger and Murderer
We live in an increasingly interconnected world. A friend may live on the other side of the planet, and yet their words appear on your computer screen to tell you how their day is going. You can pick up your phone and chat to people on…