100 years ago, Ireland was the subject of many newspaper articles around the world. The Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) catapulted the country on to front pages. I have just written an Irishman's Diary in the Irish Times newspaper about how Ireland was seen by a French journalist who spent four weeks in the country in the summer of 1920. Read it here.
The journalist, Monsieur H. Regne, worked for L'Echo de Paris, a daily broadsheet based in Paris. He arrived in Dublin by boat and traveled around the country meeting various politicians and Church leaders on his way. His lengthy articles appeared on the front page of the newspaper and follow the conventions of the French journalism genre known as grand reportage.
In the Catholic seminary in Maynooth, Co. Kildare, he met Cardinal Logue and in Trinity College Dublin, he met the Provost, Dr Bernard. On the political scene, he met Sir Horace Plunkett at his Dublin home in Foxrock, 'Kilteragh', and also met Arthur Griffith, founder of the Sinn Féin party and Vice President of the Dáil.
You may have noticed that his interviewees were all men. That's right, not a single woman is mentioned in any of his articles. Even though there were several high profile women in leadership positions in the republican movement at the time, particularly in Cumann na mBan (Constance Markievicz, Jenny Wyse Power and Louise Gavan Duffy), the journalist does not refer to any of them. It is sad that we do not get to hear about the concerns of Irish women in 1920, but this would obviously reflect the thinking at the time.
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