donegal

The question: who gets to call themselves Irish? The disgrace: not everyone born on this island. As our British cousins race to apply for their Irish passports to unlock the benefits of EU citizenship that their body politic seems hell-bent…

The partition of Ireland in 1922 only included six of Ulster's nine counties in Northern Ireland. This led to the beautiful county of Donegal being cut off- politically and economically distant from its near neighbours, geographically…

Timothy Murphy was born in 1751 in Delaware, Pennsylvania, the son of Donegal parents. Thomas and Mary Murphy left their Tirconnell home just months before Timothy was born. The Ireland they left was racked by penal laws, land agitation,…

“Is it hard to see death when it is disguised and tricked out in the surface trappings of life?” These words were written by a journalist named John Healy in 1967 in reference to the decline of his native Charlestown in Mayo over the…

I love rooting in old drawers when I go back home. Old postcards nestle alongside colourful pastille boxes now rusted around the edges. Two brass rings on each drawer-front need to be pulled at the same time so the drawers will open. Inside…

John George “Jack” Adair was born on the 3rd March 1823 in “Queen’s County” in Ireland. (The county in question was renamed “Laois” after Irish independence, for obvious reasons.) It was an appropriate home for the Adairs, who were all…

Jill Quigley grew up in Inishowen in Donegal, on a dairy farm, and most of her work is made in and around this environment. After studying art history and ancient history in college, she subsequently spent "quite a few years doing nothing…