Fabulous festive news for diggingthedirt: the infinite amount of monkeys bashing the infinite amount of typewriters that occasionally spew-forth sporadic posts for your favourite website, have been nominated for an archaeology award! Read more

‘History,’ said Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, ‘is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’ Joyce was commenting on the violence of Irish history, particularly that done in the name of Christian faith. Read more

Rising majestically above Dublin’s busiest street, the Georgian façade of the General Post Office still contains bullet holes – grim reminders of Easter Monday 1916, when Padraic Pearse read a declaration that signalled the start of the Easter Rising and the beginning of Irish Independence. ‘In the name of God,’ he began, ‘and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.’ Read more