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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
As a historian researching Irish connections with Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who has visited Russia many times in connection with my research, I am horrified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I express my solidarity with the people of Ukraine, who have a right to self-determination, democracy and peace. I also stand with…
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The 2021 round-up
My biggest cause for celebration this year (apart from the birth of my son!) was the publication of my third book, a collection I co-edited with Ragnar Deeney Almqvist and Helena Nolan: All Strangers Here: 100 Years of Personal Writing from the Irish Foreign Service (Arlen House). We celebrated with a virtual launch hosted at…
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An Post special issue: The Irish Abroad stamp collection
An Post (the Irish postal service) launched a special collection of five stamps to pay tribute to the Irish abroad, on 27 February 2020. I was honoured to be part of the committee brought together by An Post to contribute to the ideation process. We wanted to acknowledge the diversity within the Irish diaspora over…
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Befriending Byron and Poaching Antiquities: John Lee in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1810–1815
Who spends five years travelling in the Mediterranean and Middle East, hangs out with Byron in Athens, and gets in trouble for poaching Greco-Roman antiquities? A Cambridge maths graduate called John Lee, that’s who. This post looks at some key moments in Lee’s five-year tour of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East in 1810–1815. He…
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John Ross’s Arctic Artefacts on Display in Oxford
The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, is home to thousands of treasures. Many of those treasures were taken from (or “gifted by”) indigenous peoples around the world for study or as status symbols in European museums, universities, and private homes. Among the artefacts on display in the Museum, is a collection of Inuit hunting and fishing tools.…
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Scandinavian Artefacts in John Lee’s Private Museum
John Lee’s private museum at Hartwell House was said to contain some 4,000 items. The main room’s sixteen large glass cases and several smaller cabinets formed a ‘miscellaneous collection of articles culled from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms; as well as antiquarian relics, and works of industrial art.’ The museum had sections devoted to the arts…
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John Lee’s Walking Tour of Ireland, 1806–07
On 31 July 1806, John Fiott, later known as John Lee, left London to embark on a seven-month walking tour of Ireland, England and Wales. I wrote about his life, and about his walking tour of England in Wales in earlier posts. This post will look at the six months he spent walking around the southern half…
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‘Balloonacy’ in the Arctic, 1799
The first air balloon launch in the Arctic took place at Enontekiö, Finland, in July 1799. It came about with the meeting of two travelling Englishmen and a local pastor. Edward Daniel Clarke, later first professor of mineralogy at Cambridge University, was then employed as tutor to a young travelling gentleman, John Marten Cripps. The…
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A Rupert’s Land Nativity, 1807
With Christmas just days away, my mind has turned to seasonal tales I have come across in my research. One that stands out is the story of Isabel Gunn. Isabel, alias John Fubbister, alias Mary Fubbister, was born in Orkney in 1780. In 1805–6, she met John Scarth, a Hudson’s Bay Company fur-trader who was…