Patrick Duffy

The latest issue of @parlhistjournal.bsky.social explores the practices and organisation of politics in the long 19th century.

Edited by #HistParl's Dr Naomi Lloyd-Jones, this special issue can be accessed now:

Parliamentary History Click on the title to browse this journal

The 2026 special issue, edited by Naomi Lloyd-Jones is now live! The issue is the product of a 2023 conference at @durhamhistory.bsky.social discussing collective action and the politics of organisation in Britain and Ireland in the long nineteenth-century:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1750...

Parliamentary History Journal | LinkedIn Parliamentary History Journal | 4 followers on LinkedIn. Peer-reviewed research on the history of parliamentary institutions in Britain, Ireland and the British colonies. | Parliamentary History provi...

Parliamentary History is delighted to join LinkedIn! Check out our page and give us a follow. Details of our upcoming special issue will be posted on our platforms very soon! www.linkedin.com/company/parl...

Rough diamonds: Frank McNally on a geometric oddity unique to Ulster (and Pennsylvania) While most towns have squares, for some reason they’re called diamonds in the North – whatever shape they are

Rough diamonds: Frank McNally on a geometric oddity unique to Ulster (and Pennsylvania)

I was delighted to attend the launch of the @arinsproject.bsky.social exhibition on the Protestant Association of County Monaghan at Monaghan County Museum today. Curated by Samuel Beckton, it contains documents of the Association, which will be deposited in an archive after the exhibition ends1.

The Trustees and editors of Parliamentary History are delighted to announce that the essay prize for 2025 has been awarded to Peter Keeling (linktr.ee/peterkeeling) for:
‘Non-simultaneous polling in United Kingdom general elections, 1885-1918'
🧵1/6

And they’re off. The annual mass escape from Dublin Castle, commemorating the real jailbreak of 1592 by Red Hugh O’Donnell & the O’Neill Brothers. Competitors will cover 62km through the night, across the mountains to Glenmalure Valley. That’s if they make it, unlike Art O’Neill, who died en route.

Having heard about the campaign to grant Choral Evensong World Heritage status on BBC Radio 4 last night, I decided to attend one this evening at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. I used to attend one regularly during my year at @lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
bbc.com/audio/play/m...

@markhennessy.bsky.social's article on this file is the most interesting so far: www.irishtimes.com/history/2025...

State Papers - The Irish Times

One of my favourite parts of Christmas is @irishtimes.com and @news.rte.ie's coverage of the release of state papers transferred to the National Archives. Coverage be found at www.irishtimes.com/tags/state-p... and www.rte.ie/news/state-p...

Reading the Standard for the last time on a Thursdsy evening. My article on its political ideology during its first five years is on the right.

4/ As I said in my piece, the legacy of the paper will live on in that it will be an immensely valuable source for historians of County Monaghan and south Ulster in various periods of history from 1839 to 2025.

3/ I will try to get my hands on a physical copy of the last ever Standard today. For anyone not around County Monaghan this week, a digital copy of the final issue can be purchased here: subscriber.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/subscribe.as...

2/ Growing up in rural County Monaghan, it was a weekly ritual in our house to buy the both 'the Standard and the Journal' (the latter being the Irish Farmers Journal) every Thursday. When I moved to Dublin and was too busy to come home for the weekend, the digital paper was a valuable resource.

1/ I wrote a short piece on the early history of the Northern Standard for its final ever issue today. There are also some good memoirs from Adrian Harte and Brendan Ó Dufaigh shining light on its more recent history.

4/ Past editions of the paper from 1839 to 1871 can be read on britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and past editions from 1885 to 2004 can be read on irishnewsarchive.com

3/ Charles Gavan Duffy, on p. 41 of the first volume of his My life in two hemispheres (New York, 1898) noted that when the ill Arthur Wellington Holmes asked him to guest edit the Standard, he selected the 'local Orange news' from the latest papers. Something the extract from today's paper omits!

2/ I argued that the Standard was founded to act as a vehicle of politicisation to craft an identity based on Ulster as a Protestant territory. Many of its early editorials stressed the need of Protestants in Counties Monaghan, Armagh and Cavan to defend Ulster from O'Connellism

1/ Sad news from Monaghan this morning that the Northern Standard is to cease publication. I have written about the first few years of the Standard for my PhD thesis. Its inaugural editorial on 12 January 1839 promised to act as a 'watchtower' for the Protestants of Ulster'

Fighting Farney – Frank McNally on the battle for his hometown’s ‘western front’ Carrickmacross's lopsided pub distribution seems to be indirect effect of a deeper division

Fighting Farney – Frank McNally on the battle for his hometown’s ‘western front’

The Orange Order has just elected its 21st Grand Master. Here's a book I've edited and introduced on and from its early history.

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Sounds like an interesting project

Finally getting the chance to begin reading @marcmulholland.bsky.social's Rising of the moon

RTÉ to boycott Eurovision Song Contest over Israel Ireland will not participate in next year's Eurovision Song Contest, and it will not be broadcast by RTÉ, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed today that Israel will be allowed to take part...

This is the correct call. It should have been taken last year, but fair play to @rte.ie and the Dutch, Spanish and Slovenian broadcasters for doing the right thing.

RTÉ to boycott Eurovision Song Contest over Israel

www.rte.ie/entertainmen...

Seanad suspended in row over extended vote deadline to enable Coalition Senators reach chamber Doors should have been locked at usual deadline time, says Independent Lynn Ruane

I was studying in the main reading room of the @nlireland.bsky.social this evening, and I remember thinking to myself that there were quite a few division bells that I could hear from next door.
@irishtimes.com
www.irishtimes.com/politics/oir...

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy - Volume 2 03/12/1925 - Agreement Amending and Supplementing the Articles of Agreement and for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland (1921)

#OTD 100 years ago, the UK, NI and Free State govts agreed to quash the Boundary Commission: www.difp.ie/volume-2/192.... As my article argues, this agreement doesn't negate the strong evidence that the Free State took the commission seriously: muse.jhu.edu/article/956691
@difp-ria.bsky.social

A tweet series from my book: This one on O'Connellism and the triumph of conservatism in Protestant Ulster.

More crimes committed by Israel. How so many in the West continue to support this terrorist state is beyond me.

2/ See his @ausdictionarybiog.bsky.social profile here: adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gr.... I'm interested in exploring in future if James and other Protestant and Catholic convicts or settlers in Australia brought with them any identity associated with Ulster and if this affected their politics.