Centenary

100 Years – a Series of Unfortunate Events…

Soapbox on January 24, 2022, 11:41 am

| Readers 6071

By Arnold Carton. I am from the unionist community & I recently retired from my job as a secondary school teacher in the controlled (state) sector. The first 100 years of N. Ireland is over; the centenary was a disappointment, with neither unionists nor nationalists satisfied and in truth, most people being indifferent. As is usual here, both communities blame the other side; nationalists feel we unionists did not sufficiently acknowledge the pain of partition (and I have some sympathy …

The Year ’21 Podcast Journey

Claire Mitchell on December 10, 2021, 10:03 am

| Readers 771

During this year’s C. S. Lewis Festival in November, EastSide Partnership held an event to mark and celebrate the extraordinary achievement of the BBC’s Year ’21 podcast. The 50th – and final – episode airs today. Year ’21 reconstructs the events of 1921, week by week, using ordinary people’s stories, archival research and insights from expert historians. It explores the year of Northern Ireland’s formation in surprising and original ways. Approaching 500,000 downloads so far, Year ’21 has already been …

Republican anger over plans to spend £3m on Centenary Birthday card for every home in Northern Ireland…

Brian O'Neill on April 1, 2021, 7:30 am

| Readers 5218

Plans by Boris Johnson to send a card to every home in Northern Ireland to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of its foundation have met with an angry response from Nationalists and Republicans. It is thought Boris Johnson came up with the idea as a way to remind us of our importance to the Union. The front of the card features a portrait of the Queen with a massive Union Jack backdrop. The back of the card contains a personal message …

Northern Ireland Centenary: This country

Sarah Creighton on August 15, 2020, 10:59 am

| Readers 11720

This is about the centenary of Northern Ireland. But first, a slight detour. In Lucy Caldwell’s, ‘Multitudes,’ one of her characters describes the heartache of watching her teenage school friend move from Northern Ireland to England. “They’ve had enough is what Susan’s mum says. She just can’t take it anymore. ‘This country,’ she says to my mum. ‘This country,’ my mum says back to her, and neither of them says anything else.” The scene has always stuck with me because …

Clinkers, Rivets and Flatcaps: Celebrating Titanic and the Men Who Built Her.

Of This Island on April 15, 2012, 11:30 am

| Readers 746

The panicked screams of the dying could be heard long after Titanic broke in two and finally slipped under the icy waters of the North Atlantic. By the time the last voices faded and the inky dark became silence once more, over 1,500 souls had met a terrifying and lonely fate. The disaster was a human tragedy from start to finish, the consequences made even more poignant by a sequence of poor and hurried decision making from conception to demise. …