NPHFI 2014 Conference - University College Cork

The 2014 Annual Conference of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland NPHFI took place in University College Cork (UCC) on 21 & 22 November 2014. As Secretary of the Forum, I had a bit of work to do in organising the conference.

The conference was opened by the NPHFI Chairman, Dr Mark O'Brien and delegates were welcomed to UCC by the Head of the UCC School of History, Prof David Ryan. The Chairman of the Irish Examiner newspaper, Mr Tom Crosbie, also welcomed the conference delegates to Cork.

The conference theme was: 'Home thoughts from abroad: History, the Press and Diaspora'. I suppose diaspora is something that Irish people know a great deal about, with generations of Irish having been forced to move abroad in search of work and a better life.

Speakers came from universities in Ireland, UK, USA and Australia to present papers on how the link between Ireland and the Irish around the world was maintained over generations by means of the newspaper and the periodical.

The plenary speech was delivered by Prof. Donal McCracken, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who spoke about Irish edited newspaper in South Africa. There's a short piece on the conference on the Evening Echo website here.

Details of the 2015 conference will be announced soon on the NPHFI website http://newspapersperiodicals.org/ and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/NPHistoryForum

59th Cork Film Festival - documentary film: 'Séamus Murphy: A Quiet Revolution'

The 59th Cork Film Festival has just started. It runs from the 7th to the 16th of November 2014. I have already attended two screenings and I'd like to write about one of them here.

The title of the documentary film that I saw this morning was: "Séamus Murphy: A Quiet Revolution". It told the story of Cork born sculptor and stone carver Séamus Murphy RHA (1907-1975). The Irish writer and academic, Daniel Corkery was one of Murphy's teachers in school and it was Corkery who gave Murphy his first drawing lessons.

Murphy studied modeling at the Crawford Municipal School Art in Cork on Corkery's advice. He later attended night classes there and won a Gibson Bequest scholarship in 1931. With this scholarship, Murphy went to Paris in 1932-33, but doesn't seem to have enjoyed his time there. According to the documentary, Murphy found that his fellow artists in Paris were more interested in discussing art rather than actually making it.

Crawford Municipal School of Art, Cork (now Crawford Art Gallery), where Séamus Murphy learnt his trade.

Séamus Murphy's work can be seen all over Cork and throughout Ireland. He exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and was elected as a member of the RHA in 1954. He was commissioned to do sculptures in churches and he also created busts of politicians. However, he also had to do 'ordinary' work to earn a living. He created headstones for graves and this work can be seen in graveyards all over Cork. A list of his major works can be viewed here and a biography can be viewed here.

Bust of Michael Collins by Séamus Murphy in Fitzgerald's Park, Cork.

Watching the documentary, I was reminded of the brilliant RTÉ television series 'Hands', which looked at different traditional Irish crafts. I just want to say well done to the filmmaker for creating such an interesting film about a person I had not heard of before and well done to the Cork Film Festival for showing it.

An Irishman's Diary - The Irishmen who fought for the pope

Today, Saturday, 1 November 2014 sees the publication of my latest Irishman's Diary article in the Irish Times. It's about the Irishmen who served in the Papal Army in 1860. Numbers vary, but it is generally accepted that at least 1,000 Irishmen made their way to Italy to fight for the pope.

Pope Pius IX blessing his troops in St Peter's Square, Rome before the Capture of Rome, April 1870. Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pioixblesstroup.jpg

The men were recruited throughout Ireland to defend the pope's temporal authority (in other words the Papal States), which was being threatened by troops of King Victor Emmanuel who wanted to unify Italy.

It sounds strange these days, but from around the 8th century CE, the pope was the ruler of a vast stretch of land in central Italy, known as the Papal States. It ceased to exist in 1870 when Italy was unified. The Risorgimento, which was led by men such as Giuseppe Mazzini, Count Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel, saw Italy transformed from several small states into one Kingdom of Italy.

The Irish and the other papal army volunteers from France, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium were not welcomed by the inhabitants of the Papal States, who saw the men as an invading force supporting a bad government.

It may seem ironic that while some Irishmen were fighting for freedom from Britain at home in Ireland, other Irishmen would go to Italy and support another big power that was oppressing people, but the religious dimension undoubtedly blinded the Irishmen who fought for the pope to what was actually going on. They simply felt justified in fighting for the pope.

Front page of Irish Times newspaper, Saturday 1 November 2014.

FURTHER READING
If you are interested in finding out more about this topic, I would recommend that you have a look at the following sources:

• G.F.-H. Berkeley, The Irish Battalion in the Papal Army of 1860 (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1929).

• Robert Doyle, 'The pope's Irish battalion, 1860', History Ireland, Vol. 18, 2010. Available to view here.

• Ian Kenneally, Courage and Conflict: Forgotten Stories of the Irish at War (Cork: The Collins Press, 2009).

• Des Ryan, 'The Pope's Emigrants', The Old Limerick Journal, Vol. 39, 2003. Available to view here.