‘Fight With Cudgels’, Goya, 1823 Do they think that little of us? Are we that base and that cheap? Are we that antiquated a society…
Browsing: Brian John Spencer
He attended RBAI - read Law at Queen’s University, turned his back on all of this, took up a paint brush and a pen and…
In September 2013 I asked: why did unionism turn away from the passing of Seamus Heaney? In October 2015 I asked why unionism turned its face…
Where is Ulster without the Scots? Where are unionists without soft nationalists and cosmopolitan Protestants? These are the gaps that have widened since June 23 2016.…
Easter, 1916 - a terrible beauty was born. It had a dark and little seen twin; a terrible ignorance of the people of the North. South…
The rebels of 1916 came from all ranks of society, but a majority were lower-middle-class. In a time of high unemployment, the vast majority of the…
We’re all unionists now. Being a member of a group of nations that pools power and decision-making is all the vogue. For unionists, having a partition…
General John Maxwell On Monday May 1 1916 Dublin is at peace, but it is a ruin of life and property. Grown men stand in…
Edward ‘Ned’ Daly The weather on Saturday, like the events of that week, remain remarkably unseasonal. “It is astonishing that, thus early in the Spring, the weather…
By ten o’clock on Friday night the GPO is a burning shell At break of day on Friday the centre of Dublin is unrecognisable. Sackville…
The rebellion is in its fourth day and the British, with endless reserves of men and shot and shell, quickly take the balance of combat. Troops…
Nora Connolly, writer and activist, is the daughter of James Connolly. On Easter Sunday a century ago, the republican movement (the IRB and Irish Volunteers) was…
In a recent article Brian Spencer makes a number of observations about this “loutish Calvinist”. I am grateful that Eamonn has allowed this “rural unionist oaf”…
It was a terrifying sight. Like the North Korean lockstep, or something you see in grainy footage of a bygone and militarised Europe. It was bewildering.…
In, ‘Get real and love Northern Ireland for what it is warts and all’ published in the Belfast Telegraph (July 17 2015), Fionola Meredith was…