Robert Dunlop

Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Robert Dunlop’

Robert Dunlop (1861-1930) was a distinguished authority on Irish History, though he was born in Scotland and for ten years prior to the Great War was a special lecturer in Irish history at the University of Manchester. His deep knowledge of Ireland’s public records and his scrupulous research methods meant that he was commissioned to write many entries on Irish subjects for the Dictionary of National Biography and the Cambridge Modern History. He published Lives of the Irish statesmen Henry Grattan and Daniel O’Connell, and he left behind an unfinished History of Ireland.

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Bread and Scorpions by Robert Dunlop

In 1846, Daniel O’Connell stood up in the House of Commons to draw attention to the Great Hunger in Ireland, and to plead for a swift response.

Between 1845 and 1851, repeated attacks of potato blight led to the deaths of a million Irishmen from starvation and disease and the emigration of a million more. Had Parliament listened to Irish MP Daniel O’Connell, the worst of the Great Hunger might have been avoided; but that would have required the courage to ease up on the reins of power.

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