Tom Byrne

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Tom Byrne

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Thursday, 28 May 2009

‘History’s fingers never relax their grip, never leave us unmolested, can touch us even when we would never imagine their presence’

Tom Byrne, History Times writer

Robert Fisk’s words are very true and highlight exactly what fascinates me about history. History’s fingers first grabbed my imagination as a child in the shape of a ruined Castle looming large right beside where I grew up here in Ireland. Playing cowboys and indians was quite an experience – though I don’t think the 7th Cavalry ever made use of curtain walls in their forts?

History Times approved writer

However unexpected connections existed for real. Pottery found amid the debris by archaeologists was identified as coming from the south of France in the fourteenth century. The past very much made itself felt in the present. And not only in fragments surviving from the 1300s. A trio of medals from the Crimean War were family heirlooms. As was a memorial card for a casualty of the battle of Jutland. And photographs of a relative’s house being renovated in 1920s New York. Letters from other relatives had come from half way round the world, down under in Australia.

So many unsuspected unexpected connections to so many people in so many places in so many periods. All linked to and radiating from one small area in the southeast of Ireland: France, England, Russia, Turkey, Germany, America, Australia; Norman invasion, Crimea War, World War I, Roaring Twenties US, post WW II Australia; war, migration, trade, empire and politics, social upheaval, globalisation.

All centred on very real, flesh and blood people who lived and died and then left behind the artefacts and momentoes that remain as some of the only hints that their stories ever unfolded. Maybe not surprisingly the grip of history has never relaxed.

I finished a PhD in History in 2006. My thesis From Irish Whig rebel to Bourbon diplomat: the life and career of Nathaniel Hooke (1664-1738), examined how and why an Irishman changed religion, politics, country, identity and loyalties in strange and surprising ways in Early Modern Europe. I hope to look at history here on History Times in the same fashion, tracing the same unexpected connections across time and space – a kind of Irish Roving Reporter if you will!!

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