19 October 2018
When I embarked on my first diplomatic posting in India in 1980, the Ireland I left as a 24 year old was very different from the country I am proud to represent today in the United States.
The two-way economic ties between Ireland and the United States
17 October 2018
In recent weeks, I have given quite a number of briefings on the Irish economy in various parts of the United States. My aim has been to bring home to my American audiences the mutually-beneficial economic relationship that now exists between Ireland and the United States, based on substantial two-way flows of trade and investment.
W.B. Yeats in the USA, 1903-1932
11 October 2018
During five visits between 1903 and 1932, W.B. Yeats spent more than a year of his life in the United States.
Blog on the American launch of the Cambridge History of Ireland by Ambassador Mulhall
19 September 2018
We had the pleasure this week of welcoming former US Vice-President, Joe Biden, to our Embassy residence for the launch of the new, four-volume Cambridge History of Ireland.
Blog by Ambassador Mulhall on the realities of a changing Ireland
30 July 2018
At the end of the street where I live in Washington, there is a monument to the early 19th century Irish patriot, Robert Emmett, which was first erected at the Smithsonian a century ago and later transferred to its present location on Massachusetts Avenue.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert Kennedy
29 June 2018
A few months ago, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, eldest daughter of Robert Kennedy, asked me if the Embassy would like to be involved in marking the 50th anniversary of her father's death and, of course, I readily agreed.
James Joyces Ulysses Episode 1
29 May 2018
James Joyce's Ulysses, Episode 1, Telemachus.
Explaining Ireland's Brexit-related concerns to American audiences by Ambassador Daniel Mulhall
16 May 2018
Since my arrival in the United States in August last year, I have spoken multiple times at universities, to Irish community organisations and to business organisations right across this country. My topic has been Ireland in its many dimensions - literary, historical, cultural, political and economic.
02 May 2018
I first heard tell of James Joyce's Ulysses when I was at Secondary School at Mount Sion CBS in Waterford around the year 1970.
John Butler Yeats: An Irishman in New York, 1907-1922
26 March 2018
John Butler Yeats (JBY) was just months short of his 69th birthday when he decided to accompany his daughter Lily on a visit to New York where she was due to exhibit her craft work. He arrived in America in late-December 1907 and never went back, New York City becoming his adopted home for the last 14 years of his life.
21 March 2018
I have just come through my first St Patrick's Day in America and what a wonderful experience it was!
Edwin Lawrence Godkin, 1831-1902: an Irish-American Mugwump
28/02/2018
In this my latest blog on the history of Irish America, I go back again to the 19th century and to the life of the Irish-born editor and political commentator, Edwin Lawrence Godkin. Now a forgotten figure, in his heyday between the 1860s and 1890s he was influential and well-connected, numbering the writer Henry James among his many prominent American friends and associates.
Douglas Hyde in America, 1891-1906
14 February 2018
For Irish public figures in the latter part of the 19th century and the opening decades of the 20th, a tour of America was a well-trodden path. They crossed the Atlantic because they knew that the Irish in America represented a rich vein of moral and financial support for Irish nationalist movements.
Alexis de Tocqueville in America and Ireland, 1831-1835
This is my second blog on aspects of Irish-American history and it may be considered an unusual one, in that its subject is neither Irish nor American. It focuses on the French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who is renowned as the author of Democracy in America, his reflections on America gleaned during the nine months he spent there in 1831/32 in the company of his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont
Discovering Ireland's economic links with the United States
22 December 2017
Since my arrival in Washington in August of this year, I have been on a voyage of discovery and have sought to immerse myself in the Ireland-US relationship in all of its many dimensions.
Irish war correspondent, William Howard Russell, and the American Civil War
13 December 2017
This is the first in what I intend will be a series of blogs on aspects of Irish-American history.
I recently paid a visit to the site some 25 miles from Washington of the Battle of Bull Run/Manassas, the first major military engagement of the American Civil War where, on the 21st of July 1861, between them the Union and Confederate forces sustained some 5,000 casualties. On the way to the battlefield, I dipped into the diaries of a renowned Irish war correspondent who reported on that fateful battle.
Seamus Heaney's Historical Imagination
28 November 2017
On Saturday, 4th of November on the occasion of the annual gathering of the American Conference for Irish Studies (mid-Atlantic Region), I was asked to respond to Professor Michael Valdez Moses’ paper entitled ‘Where the Bodies are Buried: Seamus Heaney’s Political Geography’, which prompted me to reflect on the sense of place and historical space in Irish poetry.
John Hearne: Ireland's first Ambassador to the United States
31 October 2017
In July, I travelled to my native city of Waterford for a conference to mark the 80th anniversary of Ireland's Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, and the life of its chief draftsman, Waterford-born John Hearne. A bust of Hearne was unveiled by the Minister for Justice, Charlie Flanagan, in Waterford's newly-named Constitution Square.
