Tag: Irish Famine

Spring-summer 2026: a deeper understanding

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

Welcome to my seasonal meltdown.

Regular readers (both of you) may be aware that my blog has become slower in posting, but the posts I am putting out are longer and reaching new depths. Not of depravity, but with more research and history included.

It’s something I spend a fair amount of time thinking about – what is the point of taking all these photos and writing all these words – what is it all for?

I’ve spliced in photos from a phone camera project I have called ‘rogue vessels’, to make what I’m about to write sound less pretentious.

Photoblogs help me in the act of unlocking a landscape™️, peeling back the layers of history, culture and industry, whatever the scale, however far I get with it.

Photography is extremely effective in capturing a seemingly innocuous scene which, in fact, contains multitudes. This is not a boast of what I am putting together but the richness of the world around us. Photography is not just an artform but scientific, too.

The still image can be a pushback against the overwhelming barrage of video, AI-guff, and all-out nonsense that Facebook, whatever Twitter has become, and TikTok churn out. Stills can engage your brain and allow you to think for yourself in ways short video doesn’t.

So will photoblogs save the world? Mine won’t, but they can provide a deeper understanding for both the writer and the reader, which surely is somewhere we all need to be going in this age of political entrenchment, outrage, and mainstreaming of extreme ideology.

Below are some recent photoblogs, many of them from Ireland. I have so many interesting blogs to come in the next year, I hope they provide you with a glimmer of light (as they do for me).

What I’m writing – recent blogs

I’ve been posting my photos from my 2024 visit to Ireland which has proved surprisingly fruitful. I’ve posted several blogs about the trip and there are more to come!

Dublin Bay: a photographic deep-dive

I’ve learned a lot about Dublin Bay from writing this post, and have even started reading James Joyce’s Ulysses to keep the bay in my life. Yes, I have found the novel very hard going, and it’s on pause at the moment while I try and understand what is actually going on in it.

Rathcroghan: Halloween’s Irish origin story

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. I needed more time at Rathcroghan, rather than a pit stop, to capture more of the landscape and to learn more about the dynamic Celtic and pagan history of the place.

Downpatrick Head on the Wild Atlantic Way

I’m enjoying learning about the coasts of North Mayo through these posts. Downpatrick Head is a place I had wanted to visit for a long time.

South Downs: early summer in the Arun valley

Closer to home I delved into 2024 again to share some images from a lovely summer’s day in the South Downs.

What I’m reading

Mount Vesuvius as seen from Pompeii

Below is a selection of what I’ve managed to read cover to cover in recent months:

  • Pompeii – Mary Beard (above, February 2026). I visited Pompeii for the first time in February and have a post or two in mind for this wonderful place. Mary Beard’s interpretation of Pompeii’s history is essential reading.
  • Pax – Tom Holland. I was in total Roman mode when I got back from Italy (as in reading, not militarily), and finally got round to reading one of the more famous books from Tom Holland. I once met and photographed Tom at Sydenham Hill Wood when he was supporting London Wildlife Trust. Lovely man. I’ll be reading more of his work in future. Congratulations, Tom.
  • The Great Irish Famine: A History in Four Lives – Enda Delaney. I borrowed this book from my local library and tore through it with my eyes. The Great Famine of 1845-52 directly impacted my ancestors in Mayo so it’s something I am keen to educate myself about, and it’s an area of Britain’s colonial past we should know more about. It’s a complex subject, but there is plenty of evidence here to argue that English politicians saw the Famine as divine punishment for a people deemed beneath them. I learned that many more people died because ideology and prejudice deterred people in power from taking action. In some places, people even profited from it.

What I’m hearing

I actually went to a gig in June! Ye Vagabonds are a family band from Co. Carlow. The band were fantastic live, the final leg of their tour promoting their new album All Tied Together (January 2026). The songs are lovely.

What I’m watching

Thanks to a wonderful Blindboy podcast episode I learned about the work of David Keohan, who is now famous for reigniting the interest in Irish stone lifting. This short film nicely encapsulates how David goes about his work to rediscover old stones in Ireland, and to lift them again after several decades of mostly being stuck to the ground. David also has a book out called The Wind Beneath the Stone.

Thanks for reading.

Dublin: ‘I float down the Liffey’ 🇮🇪

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

The River Liffey, Dublin, March 2024

2025 will be a year of catching up on last year’s photos. 2024 was a really busy year of travel and life events after the fallow pandemic years (2020-22).

I was in Dublin in March 2023 for – you guessed it – my stag weekend. It was more a spiritual visit, made by ferry, rather than an idiots’ weekend away. This post wouldn’t have been possible without my best man Liam’s work in booking the boat tour, the only one on the river.

For the visit I took my Olympus TG-6 Tough compact camera, but didn’t take photos as raw files so these are edited jpegs, which is obviously a crime against photography. The images from the water are taken through glass, so they have degraded even more (you probably won’t notice). The light was nice though, and image quality isn’t everything.

The title of this blog is a pointer to a lyric in the Radiohead song How to disappear completely.

Passing the Liffey is carved into my memories of Dublin having travelled so many times on the ferry, across and along the river in the car after disembarking. It’s also where my parents bought me my first Everton shirt in 1995.

We were staying on the north side of the Liffey, the older part of Dublin.

Who doesn’t like some unofficial street sculpture – if it’s fly-tipping that’s obviously different. Now for a handbrake turn:

The Famine Sculptures are one of the most striking installations along the Liffey. They act to remind us of the millions of people forced to emigrate or leave their homes during the Great Famine (1845-49). It is a shocking event in British and Irish history and too few people in Britain are educated about it.

I don’t mean that from a place of “victimhood”, as one true British patriot put it to me once. It’s just that I’ve come to appreciate that the understanding of Irish history is very poor in Britain. Irish history is British history, too. There is so much more we could have learned in school about the role of the British Empire and how it explains the country we find ourselves in today.

On a lighter note, this Saturday Night Live sketch with Paul Mescal poking fun at those of us with ‘Irish ancestry’ is very funny:

From a personal perspective the famine drove my Mayo ancestors to attempt new lives in North America. The statues here are in place alongside where one of the “famine ships”, the “Jeanie Johnston” departed for New York:

The original Jeanie Johnston carried 2,500 Irish emigrants across 16 journeys to North America during the Famine.

You can see the Jeanie Johnston moored in the left-hand side of the image below right.

This is the Harp or Samuel Beckett Bridge, looking out towards the Irish Sea. The harp is a significant symbol in Irish national identity. During a walking tour we learned that the Irish government had to get permission from Guinness to use the harp as its national emblem, and with restrictions on how it could be employed.

Custom House dominates part of the north bank of the Liffey. It was burnt down in 1921 as the Irish Republican Army attempted to destroy tax records in a raid.

This building once managed the movement of goods up the Liffey into Ireland.

And here it is from street level. The tent on the left is where a person was rough sleeping. We were told that the river was once significantly wider than it is now.

Two swans in the river on the other side – taken a good half an hour later, don’t worry.

At first this tower looked disused but I’m not sure if it is. The banner’s related to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza (at least 2023-present day). Ireland is outspoken on the need for a ceasefire, a two-state solution and for an end to the Israeli military’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The banner seems to have the name of SIPTU – a trade union – branded on it. For the those who aren’t aware, the Palestinian cause is one of the most significant humanitarian and political issues for ‘the left’ in Britain and Ireland, probably more so than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This barrel of a building is the Convention Centre, opened to the public in 2010.

This is the Dockland Campus of the Central Bank of Ireland. The design on the side is supposed to give the impression of leaves rustling (or something) but it didn’t see that when we passed it.

Here are some chilled out Saturday drinkers on the south side of the river.

I’ve got a post to come with images from the ferry leaving Dublin in August 2024, featuring seals, gulls and some interesting old buildings.

Thanks for reading.