The Penal Laws: An Irish Apartheid?

During the Irish War of Independence, republicans in Ireland looked far beyond Britain and America for support. In Egypt and India, they found allies. Secret meetings took place between IRA representatives and Egyptian revolutionaries, while Irish republicans also made contact wi ...  Show more

In 1939, Ireland declared itself neutral in the Second World War. But neutrality did not mean the island was safe. Indeed, both Germany and Britain developed plans to occupy the entire island.This episode focuses on Operation Green, Hitler's secret invasion plan for Ireland, and ...  Show more

His statue may stand proudly outside the Houses of Parliament in London, but in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell is remembered as “the Devil from over the Sea” for the bloodshed he unleashed there from 1649 to 1653.  Rising to prominence as a Parliamentarian during the English Civil War ...  Show more

The Irish republicans who led the Easter Rising of 1916 are tried for treason by the British government, and sentenced to death. Some are so unwell they have to be tied to a chair to be killed, and the brutality of these executions turns the tide of public opinion in Ireland, inc ...  Show more

Ireland is the only country in Western Europe that has experienced being colonised in the modern era. It was used by England as a laboratory for imperialism, and was the site of bloody colonial wars for centuries, yet many people in the neighbouring United Kingdom have little und ...  Show more

The legacy of the Great Famine continues to shape not only Ireland, but the Irish diaspora in America, Canada, and the UK. In the mid-1800s, starving families fled the country in search of survival, gathering at the docks to board “coffins ships” sailing to Liverpool and the east ...  Show more