On the eve of what would have been Princess Diana’s 56th birthday, Ryle Dwyer reveals her hidden Irish connections.

For Leaving Certificate French students, a morning exam featured questions in the listening test which were fairly typical and quite manageable for well-practised students.

EXOTIC names of places like Kabul, Kandahar and Khartoum were on the lips of many Irish people not only during the past 20 years but also in the 1870s and 1880s.

Previously unseen poems, slogans, and autographs of Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, and Countess Markievicz capture the swarm of republican activity in Clare to kickstart Éamon de Valera’s political career 100 years ago.

Today is World Poetry Day, so Jonathan deBurca Butler asked a number of people to select their favourite work

The decision by Henry Ford to expand into Ireland and the county of his ancestors would transform Cork’s industrial landscape forever, writes John Dolan.

On the 125th anniversary of the death of CS Parnell, Ryle Dwyer looks at the historical implications of the Church leading a heave against him.

It is more than ironic that while urging us “not to mix up historical fact with propaganda”, Liam MacFadden (April 25) indulges in quite a lot of historical revisionism himself. 

It was not by chance that Pádraig Pearse was the first rebel court-martialled and killed, writes Ruán O’Donnell

Michael Clifford’s article of March 26 is typical of the denial being preached in the media about the causes and seriousness of both our situation in 2010 and our present situation.

IF THE August 1915 funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was a portent of the Irish Volunteers’ military strength, British authorities were given an even clearer picture just five weeks before the Easter Rising began.

Politics at the start of 1916 in Cork City and county was overshadowed by events in Europe and the Middle East.

As an Irish exile in Trieste and Paris, James Joyce considered the matter of an Irish insurrection in detail. He kept in touch with Ireland mainly through Arthur Griffith’s United Irishman and Sinn Féin newspapers.

Ireland was not included in Britain’s conscription bill of January, 1916, but by then 90,000 Irishmen had volunteered, as many more would before 1918.

No one, not the IRA, not Sinn Féin, not Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael, nor any party or organisation, owns or has a monopoly on the Rising or its legacy, writes Danny Morrison.

The execution of Thomas Kent on May 9, 1916, was a crude exercise in propaganda, far removed from the moral force of the scales of justice, on the part of Major General JG Maxwell, the military governor at a time when the civil governance of the country was in a state of chaotic dissolution.

Concerning the recent O’Donovan Rossa funeral commemoration rhetoric; it should be noted that John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party had strong associations with early Fenianism.

The 385,000 voters born in Ireland will have some influence on the result of the British election, but its outcome could yet have a great deal of significance for the Republic. 

Ukip and the SNP are making inroads ahead of the election. Deadlock at Westminster would spell bad news for Ireland, writes 

The electoral mathematics of the next general election could dictate a Fine Gael/Fianna Fail/Labour coalition, if each is not prepared to bed down with Sinn Fein. Anyone in doubt should look to history.

A Labour TD has said that it was "wrong" of An Post to produce stamps commemorating John Redmond, as the Irish Parliamentary Party leader "promoted, recruited, and shamed Irishmen into killing for Great Britain".

From 1978 to 2003, generations of young people dancing like their lives depended on it — along with a host of roadies, rock stars and DJs — passed through the labyrinth of bars and dance floors that was Sir Henry’s nightclub in Cork city.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and British prime minister David Cameron are to visit First World War graves and memorials on the site of the Western Front.

Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922

A new book exposes how, after a promising start, corruption became endemic in Irish political life, writes Colette Browne

In the first of three articles on the history of the presidency, Ryle Dwyer highlights the early importance of the office. It was not the partition but the head of state issue that led to the Civil War.

ENDA Kenny swept into the Burlington Hotel’s glittering ballroom as Taoiseach-in-waiting — and no one had ever been waiting for such validation for so long.

Brian Barton

LIKE Dr Pat Walsh (Letters, May 12), I too welcome the debate on Gallipoli in the columns of the Irish Examiner.

Former president of the Workers’ Party, Tomas Mac Giolla, died today after a long battle with illness.

IT’S 125 years old this year and if some reports are to be believed, the Orange Card is still the one the British Tories feel should be played. It was Sir Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, who coined the phrase in the aftermath of the 1885 election and it continues to have a chilly resonance for nationalists.

THE indignant rant of Pierce Martin (Letters, January 12) in response to my letter of January 5 (‘Intellectual giant who turned into a political pygmy’) clearly shows that even three generations into partition, and all the horrors that have flowed from that seismic event, there are still some among us who resent the removal of British colonialism from Ireland.

THE column by Steven King headlined “Republicans’ original mandate can be consigned to dustbin of history” (December 3) left me perplexed, to say the least.

Ireland’s education system will be discussed by cross-border government ministers and academics at the Parnell Summer School today.

IN A sense, Irish politics has gone into suspended animation. Bertie Ahern has been replaced as leader of Fianna Fáil but he remains as Taoiseach for over three weeks. This kind of hiatus effectively happens just about every decade after an election in which the people decide to change government.

PERHAPS the key date in the history of ancient Ireland is that of Good Friday, April 23, 1014, the day of Brian Boru’s victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf.

The legacy of the 1916 Easter Rising will be discussed today at the Parnell Summer School in Co Wicklow.

Politicians and academics gather in Co Wicklow today for the annual five-day Parnell Summer School.

IN his letter headlined ‘Religion had nothing to do with struggle for independence’ (Irish Examiner, July 31), Pádraig Ó Cuanacháin takes me to task for suggesting that the killing of Mrs Lindsay and the sparing of Fr Shinnick was a sectarian response to their roles in trying to avert the Dripsey ambush in Co Cork and going to their relevant ‘sides’ in order to so do.