Greetings from Mullingar

Posted in either 1906 or 1908, this postcard featuring a mustachioed soldier walking across Mullingar Barracks Square is typical of many produced in Ireland from 1890 onward. To contemporary eyes, the image is striking in its ordinariness: where is the…

A Plague of Plaques: memorialising war in urban Ireland

Just now, it seems that war commemorations are to the fore of public consciousness. Here in Ireland, the preparations for marking Easter Rising 1916 are beginning to gather pace. Since the Rising was almost entirely a Dublin-based event, people in…