Irish History Podcast

Every year, fragments of long-lost ships wash ashore on Irish beaches. They are remnants of the thousands of shipwrecks scattered around our coast, dating from Prehistory to the Second World War. Each wreck has a fascinating story from how they went down to their rediscovery often centuries later.

In this episode, I speak with Dublin Port Heritage Director Lar Jo...

In 1922, Ireland gained its independence. The new state promised to revive the Irish language. A century later, English still dominates daily life. What went wrong?

In this episode, I speak to John Walsh of the University of Galway, author of One Hundred Years of Irish Language Policy, 1922–2022, about why a movement that had real momentum in the years before i...

In the 1920s, the newly established Irish Free State embarked on one of the most ambitious engineering projects in its history: the Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha.

This was a state-of-the-art hydroelectric plant that paved the way for the electrification of Irish society. The scheme developed an almost mythic reputation, becoming a powerful symbol of independence, progre...

A video version of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/irish-history-podcast/id363368392

On the day Hitler invaded Poland, another Hitler was making headlines in Britain. It was not...

Family history is often where the heroic version of the past falls apart.

We like to imagine our ancestors standing on the right side of history. Someone in the GPO in 1916 or in the IRA in 1920. We like to think they made brave choice when it mattered. But most people were not heroes, revolutionaries or figures from the history books. They were ordinary people tr...