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The Quare Fellow, by Brendan Behan
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A range of lives feature in the December 2015 ‘missing persons’ update to the Dictionary of Irish Biography online, comprising persons omitted from the 2009 first edition. This entry focuses on Sir Francis Vane – soldier and radical.
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The 1718 emigration is one of the earliest known planned group migrations from Ireland. Migrants from the Bann valley founded towns in New England.
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To mark Pride 2019 we are publishing our recent entry on celebrated musician and activist Philip Chevron (1957–2013), writer of the heartfelt 'Under Clery's clock' about his experience as a gay man in 1980s Dublin.
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Pioneering motorist Fay Taylour joins the DIB in our latest batch of 'missing persons'. Born in Offaly in 1904, she won multiple major motorcycle and car racing titles against both male and female competitors.
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The DIB has curated a selection of its most notorious rogues – pirates, blackmailers, thieves and murderers – for your delectation. We start with Anne Bonney, perhaps the most famous female pirate of all time, who terrorised the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola alongside Captain Calico Jack.
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The Royal Irish Academy has published a special Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) collection, Irish lives in America (November 2021).
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Harry Clarke’s Eve of St Agnes 1924
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An Taoiseach Enda Kenny presented Peter Robinson with the Dictionary of Irish Biography
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‘Women on Walls' is a campaign by Accenture in partnership with the Royal Irish Academy that seeks to make women leaders visible through a series of commissioned portraits that will create a lasting cultural legacy for Ireland in 2016. Read the Dictionary of Irish Biography...
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As part of the current RIA lunchtime series ‘Sisters’, Dr Margaret Ward today delivers her lecture ‘“A precious boon” in difficult times – Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and her sisters’ at Academy House. To accompany that event here is the Dictionary of Irish Biography’s entry on...
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This coming Friday Terry Clavin will be speaking at Christ Church Cathedral on the many DIB lives connected to the institution throughout its rich history. To mark this event read the DIB entry on Sitriuc Silkbeard, by Howard Clarke, below.
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Did you know that many of our books are available in digital format? Here’s the list.
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Our next DIB explorer is William Lamport, who worked as a spy in Italy and Catalonia and plotted to seize control of Mexico City with a militia of indigenous mine workers.
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Forgotten heroes, unforgettable failures, the tragic, talented lives cut short – would they feel disappointed to be lost to the archives or do they think they expected to end up there at all? Fiona Murphy of Books Ireland talks to the Dictionary of Irish Biography...
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How the writing of Irish History led to the making of Irish History.
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Jim Larkin Statue, O’Connell Street Dublin by Oisín Kelly, 1978
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To mark the centenary of the death of Thomas Ashe on 25 September 1917 we have published online his biography from our project the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
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To mark the anniversary of Maria Edgeworth's death in 1849, we have posted the DIB entry of one of Ireland's greatest writers, by Edwina Keown.
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To mark the publication of A history of Ireland in 100 words the DIB is publishing biographies of key figures from Irish history who make intriguing appearances in the new book. Queen Medb of Connacht, for example, shows up in entries as diverse as 'Carn',...
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Selected by Dr Déirdre D’Auria, Eagarthóir Cúnta, Foclóir Stairiúil na Gaeilge, paediatrician Dorothy Stopford-Price conducted groundbreaking research into the treatment of TB in children. Her entry is presented here as part of our 'Favourite DIB lives' series.
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Today, 18 October 2020, marks fifty years since the death of Máirtín Ó Cadhain, one of Ireland’s foremost literary figures of the twentieth century.
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Read the latest DIB blog
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The Winding Stair, WB Yeats,1933
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Aer Lingus Summer Timetable, 1955 by Guus Melai
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