Carol Maddock

Seeking an Assistant Librarian - Marsh's Library We are seeking to recruit an Assistant Librarian for Marsh’s Library in central Dublin. Location: St. Patrick’s Close, Dublin 8 Reporting to: Assistant Director, Marsh’s Library Salary: €40,000 – €45,...

We are seeking to appoint an Assistant Librarian in Marsh's Library. This will be a great position for an early-career librarian. Further details at: marshlibrary.ie/assistant-li...

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin,
patron saint of tired scientists, grumpy fieldworkers, and hating your own manuscript.

a police officer says " let 's be careful out there " Alt: Hill Street Blues' Sergeant Phil Esterhaus advises: "Let's be careful out there".

Friday 13th.

A poster in black and beige on a white background hangs on a beige wall. In small font at the top: "Beware of Artists" - Actual poster issued by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950s, at height of the red scare. The poster itself in all capital letters reads: Beware of / Artists / They mix with all / Classes of Society / And are therefore / The most dangerous A smaller black plaque at the bottom reads : Collection of Banned or Challenged Books. Beside is a partial QR code.

With #AltText

Thank goodness. Need your nonsense. Mind yourself.

We're hiring text poster with a photograph of a man looking at negatives

📣 We’re #hiring! AK1 Photographic Collections 📸

The National Library of Ireland is recruiting an Assistant Keeper Grade 1 to help care for and develop our Photographic Collections.

🗓️ #Apply by 3pm, 27 Feb 2026 via our website: https://www.nli.ie/about-us/working-national-library-ireland

A pair of St. Brigid's crosses on a countertop, next to a mug. #SpéirGorm #SpéirGhorm #Ireland

For the uninitiated, these are Irish Throwing Stars, an ancient weapon wielded by St. Brigid during the 1916 Rising, striking fear into the hearts of the British, and responsible for the eventual smiting of both Cromwell and Thatcher.

A promotional image for the book, Steel-Plate Subversive based on the front cover. The background is the surface of the sea at night, the view is from above, looking down at the deck of a small, steel-grey submarine, cutting diagonally across the lower half of the frame. The hatch in the low-profile turret is open. A bearded white man in a green woollen jumper and brown flat cap is standing waist-deep in the open hatch, holding up a Thompson submachine gun. He’s lit from below by the red light inside the submarine. The title is in orange below the hatch, and my name is in white below that. In the top half, against the dark water, the text reads: ‘Dublin City was a bomb waiting to go off.'

The story starts in 1920 on a day of murder in Dublin. A British spy is exposed and has to escape before she's caught. As the violence of the War of Independence peaks, one veteran rebel leader is asking himself how long he can go on.

#SpéirGhorm #SpeirGorm #IrishHistory #SteelPlateSubversive

Ah, thanks! Do not remember that at all, at all.

Ditto!!

I just lost my source of hay due to weather issues for my supplying farmer who cannot turn out his livestock-- if anyone knows of any farmer supplying good round and/or square bales in areas surrounding Dublin, ideally who delivers, please DM!

What did the Normans ever do for us? Apparently they gave us a lovely Windmill in Tacumshane in County Wexford. Today's image is from the wonderful Irish Tourist Association collection. At a time when local and folk history is more value...

"This is one of the last three intact windmills in Ireland of a type known as a Tower Mill... built by Nicholes Moran in 1846 and was re-thatched in 1908. Used up till 1936, it was re-constructed in 1952."

Context for a windmill pic from the Natl Library of Ireland.

www.flickr.com/photos/nlire...

😀

The full cover, back and front, of my novel, Steel-Plate Subversive. Overall, it’s a deep blue and sea green, the colour of sea at night. On the front, the view is from above, looking down at the deck of a small, steel-grey submarine at night. The hatch in the low-profile turret is open. A bearded white man in a green woollen jumper and brown flat cap is in the open hatch, holding a Thompson submachine gun. He’s lit from below by the red light inside the submarine. The title is vertical, in orange, down the left side, and the tagline is in white, much smaller to the right: ‘Irish revolutionaries, British spies, German mercenaries, and a submarine that shouldn't exist.’ My name is in white at the bottom. The back cover shows the same submarine in the harbour of a small town at night, racing away at speed. The blurb reads: There's something out there in the water. A shaky truce has been established in Ireland's War of Independence. In 1921, as negotiations begin in London to finally free the Irish from British control, a young intelligence agent named Esther Sinclair discovers that a nightmarish weapon has gone missing in France. Akiko Regan and her cousin Liam O'Leary have made their own discovery: Akiko's father, Michael, is the leader of the mysterious rebel group known as the Selkies. Michael is an engineer who trained under the famous John Philip Holland in New Jersey. At the start of the century, Holland's designs had established the submarine fleets of five nations. But the Irishman's very first submarines were built for the Irish republican movement. The Royal Navy have no idea that a Holland vessel has heen operating in the Irish Sea. Michael had hoped to shield Akiko and Liam from the ongoing violence. Now, however, the family find themselves drawn into a crisis that threatens not just their lives but the future of their country. There’s an Arts Council of Ireland logo across from the barcode, to acknowledge funding for the writing of the book.

I've never understood how nobody has ever written a novel about this before, but there was a brief time when the *Irish republican movement* possessed the first fully functional submarine.

Yes, you heard that right.

A short thread . . . 1/

#SpeirGorm #JohnPhilipHolland #Submarine

'All the best spies eat at Gaj's'.
B. #OTD 1919, Margaret Gaj’s eatery in the heart of 'Baggatonia' welcomed a diverse clientele. Garda special branch often dropped in to check who was there, leading the restaurant to advertise 'All the best spies eat at Gaj's'. www.dib.ie/biography/ga... #DIBLives

Mnemonic   Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. Unless a leap year is its fate, February hath twenty-eight. All the rest hath three days more, excepting January, which hath six thousand, one hundred and eighty-four. Brian Bilston

Annual reminder of how many days there are in each month.

Should anyone want an exhibit or talk over the coming months, do get in touch. I'm currently putting together a presentation on 100 years of Fianna Fáil, focusing on material produced by the party, should you be interested. Thanks Alan

AGM Academic & Special Libraries. Guest speaker: Orla Fitzpatrick, Poetry Ireland. Special Librarian and academic: is it possible to be both? Tuesday, 3rd February, online via zoom @ 7pm. Registration and more info: www.aslibraries.ie.

Don't miss our FREE online AGM Event on 3rd February at 7pm! Enjoy a talk from @poetryireland.bsky.social Librarian Dr Orla Fitzpatrick ‘Special Librarian and academic: is it possible to be both?’ and get up to date on #ASL2026 and more. aslibraries.ie/2026/01/15/a...

It is spendy alright. So one benefit of getting older.

Age matters? My Young Man (60) was told that should do him.

This year why don't you give your special someone an art print of the dismembered corpse of Saint Valentine ❤️

Available now in my print shop!
grahamartwork.bigcartel.com/product/sain...

Serendipity.

Keep up the good work! I don't have kids, but if I find myself in children's section of shops, I end up muttering like a crazy person!

Every cloud has a silver lining, or gold. Way too rough to swim at the Vico Baths so came to Colliemore Harbour expecting shelter to no avail.
Compensation was this beautiful sunrise.

The Power of Poetry   with things falling apart and anarchy let loose,   it was only poetry, he found, which had any use,   so he reached for his copy   of The Complete Works of Yeats   and bludgeoned the President of the United States Brian Bilston

Here’s a short poem about the power of poetry to change the world.

Always loved the story about how the sisters would run down to Percy Place to fetch Thomas Kinsella up to the shop to answer poetry questions.

Swit Swoo!

That's lovely.

Portrait format in acrylics on mat board. Abstracted impressionistic very loose rendition of two men wearing caps and jackets sitting on a bench turned to each other in conversation. The men and the horizontal beams of the bench are in hues of blues and greens. There are no facial features, and in the case of the man on the right virtually no face at all as we see through to the background colour. The background is a painterly pale pink for the top two-thirds, and a loosely dry-brushed bold orange for the bottom third behind their feet, lower legs, and legs of the bench. I took the photograph of the painting before I added my signature.

A #painting called "Seated Men" which was the first I did in a series of paintings of men in conversation. It was subsequently used as the cover for a book of Irish short stories published for the benefit of the Haiti earthquake relief. #art #SpeirGhorm

Hello historians - there is a specific purpose role now advertised in UL’s history department - Title of Post: Assistant Professor in Irish History (specialism History of the Family) - all details are over on UL vacancies! Do share! #jobsky #skystorians #speirgorm #speirghorm