David McCullagh

Sep 8, 2024 | rte.ie | David McCullagh

David McCullagh reviews Maurice J. Casey's new book Hotel Lux, subtitled An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals. This book is crammed full of stories of fascinating people who led extraordinary lives – and yet one of the main characters is actually a building. The Hotel Lux of the title is described by author Maurice Casey as "the most remarkable hotel in modern history", and it’s not an exaggeration.

Jun 20, 2024 | rte.ie | David McCullagh

The assertion that land is all that matters, and that the struggle over it "shaped Irish history", are big claims to make. But Myles Dungan more than backs them up in his magnificent new history of the subject. One statistic to justify his claim jumps out: in 1870, around 3% of householders in rural Ireland owned their own land. By 1916, that figure had risen to 64%.

May 8, 2024 | rte.ie | David McCullagh

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Jan 16, 2024 | rte.ie | David McCullagh

After the Decade of Centenaries - ten years of intensively studying the events of a century ago - is there a single new thing to be said about the period from the Third Home Rule Bill to the Treaty? Well, yes, actually.

Dec 29, 2023 | rte.ie | David McCullagh |Shane McElhatton

Secret government documents from 1975 considered what might happen in the event of a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. The cabinet ordered civil servants to draw up a series of discussion papers looking at possible scenarios in July 1974, shortly after the collapse of the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement, at a time when paramilitary violence was intensifying and when there were serious doubts about the British government's commitment to stay in the North.