Mark Holan's Irish-American Blog

I am a journalist of Irish descent residing in Boston. Thanks to my maternal grandparents from County Kerry, I have Irish citizenship and an Irish/EU passport. I have traveled to both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland 10 times, including a journalism fellowship with the German Marshall Fund.

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Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 1

1 week ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th centuries travels to the country. Over the next few weeks I will publish some of my travel photos, plus links to the correspondent’s original reporting and my work about them. MH***“(Traveling into County Donegal we) entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed and irreclaimable.
BULLETIN: McIlroy masters the Masters

1 week ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Rory McIlroy, of Holywood, Northern Ireland, has become only the sixth golfer to will all four of the sport’s major tournaments and the first from Europe to join the elite Grand Slam club. His playoff victory at the Augusta National course in Georgia was has first major tourney win in 11 years. The Journal.ie reports reactions from political leaders on both side of the Irish border.
New(ish) Dublin museum focuses on Irish literature

2 weeks ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

DUBLIN–The Dublin Writers Museum opened in 1991 inside an 18th-century Georgian townhouse at 18 Parnell Square. It was dedicated to the county’s literary giants, including Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and others.
Heading to Ireland as Trump imposes tariffs

3 weeks ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

US President Donald Trump has launched a global trade war, with a 20 percent tariff set to hit the European Union, including the Republic of Ireland, while only the 10 percent base rate applies to the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. The 10 percent tariff difference on the island of Ireland–the only land border between the EU and the UK–is likely to add to the headaches already caused by Brexit. And I mean political as well as economic troubles.
Zoom presentation on Michael J. O’Brien coming April 21

3 weeks ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

As historiographer of the American Irish Historical Society, County Cork-born Michael J. O’Brien focused on Irish contributions to colonial America. In 1919, as the Irish War of Independence heated up, he published A Hidden Phase of American History: Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty. The book was deployed to help make the case for why America should support Ireland’s struggle for liberty.
Four great stories about American journalists in Ireland

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Below are four recent stories about American journalists in Ireland. The six correspondents highlighted in these pieces visited the country between 1919 and 1925. Their work drew attention on both sides of the Atlantic. My research in this subject area continues. Suggestions and comments are welcome. MH Richard Lee Strout: A Young American Reporter In Revolutionary Ireland After spending a year interning at London newspapers, Strout stopped in Ireland on his way back to America.
Remembering COVID’s deadly impact on St. Patrick’s Day

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

It’s now five years since COVID-19 began spreading sickness and death across the world. The cancelation of St. Patrick’s Day parades and related events in America and Ireland became an early, signal sign of the pandemic’s impact on our daily lives. It was hardly the most important development, to be sure, but it certainly presaged the misery and disruptions that lay ahead. Annual parades did not return in most cities until March 2022.
Martin in Washington for early St. Patrick’s Day events

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

(This is a developing story. Email subscribers should visit the website for updates. MH)Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin has began making the rounds in Washington. This year’s bilateral meetings are so highly anticipated that it only makes sense they would occur five days before St. Patrick’s Day. Martin is the first foreign leader to visit the White House since US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28.
When the Irish ‘exposed’ a New York Herald reporter

1 month ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

In June 1919 the Irish American press praised New York Herald correspondent Truman H. Talley for publicizing a report that criticized the British administration of Ireland. Three months later, as the Herald published Talley’s own investigation of Ireland, the same papers called him a British propagandist. Irish nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic cited what they described as evidence of Talley’s bias.
Could Maine potatoes have relieved Irish hunger in 1925?

2 months ago | markholan.org | Mark Holan

Milton Bronner’s “extensive trip up and down the western counties of Ireland” in February 1925 covered the most forlorn districts of the island at the bleakest time of the year. He came to investigate whether famine had also visited these remote parts of the three-year-old Irish Free State. Such a frightening possibility fell within the lifespan of those who remembered the mid-nineteenth century collapse of Ireland’s most important food staple, the potato.