Expand+This is a military history of Ireland during the First World War. In August 1914 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland declared war on Germany. There were already sixteen regiments of the king's army which proclaimed themselves Irish and ...

Hide-This is a military history of Ireland during the First World War. In August 1914 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland declared war on Germany. There were already sixteen regiments of the king's army which proclaimed themselves Irish and wore harp or shamrock as their badge. Even in peacetime they comprised a force much larger than all the combined personnel of Ireland's defence forces today. On the outbreak of war they were joined by tens of thousands of volunteers. These men came from a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war. The survivors returned to a country transformed and transforming in a new struggle.

Expand+These lectures examine the war from Ireland's perspective, and the changes the country underwent in those years, but it is above all about Irish soldiers: from the imperial veterans who changed their red coats for khaki in 1914, to the young voluntee...

Hide-These lectures examine the war from Ireland's perspective, and the changes the country underwent in those years, but it is above all about Irish soldiers: from the imperial veterans who changed their red coats for khaki in 1914, to the young volunteers who fought on the most terrible battlefields that Irish soldiery had ever known. On the highest level we find Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, son of the landed gentry, born in Listowel, Secretary of State for War, and the face on a thousand recruiting posters. At the other end of the scale there is Tom Barry, corporal in the Royal Field Artillery, Mesopotamia, and Brigade Commander in the IRA, West Cork. In between were all the men, rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic, of whom more than 30,000 never came home. This course will look at the traditions of service and the realities of experience; the impulses that made men fight, and the impact of Ireland's turbulent politics on their actions and their motivations.

1. Some Say the Devil is Dead: Introducing His Majesty's Irish regiments.

2. Tipperary: Ireland goes to war.

3. My Little Wet Home in a Trench: The Western Front, 1914 to 1915.

4. You'd Look Fine in Khaki-o: Answering the call of Kitchener and Redmond.

5. Left My Heart in Suvla Bay: The Dardanelles campaign.

6. The Sash My Father Wore: 36th Division and the battle of the Somme.

7. God and the Dead Generations: Easter 1916, on the streets and at the front.

8. Today is the Battle of Jutland, and there won't be Make and Mend: Ireland and the naval campaign.

9. Most of the World's in a Sandbag: World War, 1916 to 1918.

10. And When the War is Over, What Will the Soldiers Do? Home to the wars, 1919.

The course is a series of ten two-hour lectures, with handouts supplied as necessary