It’s a long time since I’ve written a non-technical post, but I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while. A largely unrelated (it mentioned the word ancestory) Twitter conversation between historians Lucy Inglis and Ellen Leslie reminded me to do so.
An ancestor of mine, Anne Devlin, played an important part in Irish history and its struggle against British rule in Ireland.
This is my first attempt at a history blog post, and one might say that as an Irishman, the subject is a contentious one. Long villifed in Irish history for his conduct in Ireland in 1649, growing up in Ireland I only remember bad things about him. Since living in England I have heard a different story where the episode in Ireland is largely ignored and they (understandable one might say) concentrate on the good things that he did for England. Both histories are biased towards themselves. As GK Chesterton remarked,
the tragedy of the English conquest of Ireland in the 17th century is that the Irish can never forget it and the English can never remember it
.Why is he seen this way in Ireland? Is it fair? And what about the English? Should they look beyond what he did for England and see the effect he had on other countries and their relationships with them?
I have now registered to begin my first ever course with the Open University. As of the 2nd of October I will once again be a student when I begin AA100 – The arts past and present.
The intention is for this to eventually lead to a BA (Honours) in History, although that’s a fair distance away but I have to start somewhere!
As a youngster, I’ve always had an interest in history, obtaining an A grade in my Irish Intermediate Certificate (now called the Junior Certificate and roughly equivalent to British GCSEs), my study for the exam being to sit down and read both my Irish history books from start to finish, and was bitterly disappointed that I was unable to study the subject for my Leaving Certificate (again roughly equivalent to Britain’s A-Levels) due to subject choices (I wanted to study Physics as an aid to doing a degree in computers and the choice was one of Physics, History or Business Organisation).