What is his practical impact on Christianitys development? He in chance says that he went where no men went before. Its a famous expression that survives down to the present day, and he clearly did go where no other Christian missionary had gone befo...
His memory would be obliterated by events which would create Ireland's first and most enduring cult of personality. It is the story of a spiritual revolution born in an age of imperial collapse. Since the beginning of the fifth century, barbarian att...
This type of inscribed stone is usually found only in Ireland or the far western fringes of Britain. These lines represent the oldest form of the Irish language. Michael, what is this stone? Well, it is a small Roman column, but what's very different...
It seems the Romans did briefly contemplate an invasion until trouble in Scotland called the legions away. And so Ireland was never subordinated to Roman law or government. But they didn't need to dispatch an army to exert an influence that extended...
A geographer living under Caesars rule described the Irish as a cannibal race who deemed it commendable to devour their deceased fathers and who lived a miserable existence because of the cold. But Mediterranean traders had long been immune to such d...
The murdered man from the Meath bog reveals something of how the Irish lived several hundreds years before Christ. Their gods were the gods of nature whom they appeased with sacrifice. They had developed a social organisation with kings at the pinnac...
-We can see he has this very unusual hairstyle. The front of the forehead was shaved, and then the rest of hair was bundled up a bit like a Mohawk. And that was held in place with a hair gel, which was made using resin imported from the Pyrenees. -Th...
-You always ask me difficult questions. -Well, that's my job. -Well, this does at least tell us somebody comes from Northern Europe here with this material in quite considerable amounts. -Well, somebody may not have come. Somebody may have been handi...
-Why would they build something like this? What were they trying to say? -I think for early farmers, the notion of ancestry, that's really the central focus of this world. The monuments themselves contain selected bones of the ancestors. This is the...
-I remember one kid said, Sir, that doesn't make any sense? I said, How do you mean it doesn't make any sense? I said, Carson wanted the union of Ireland and Britain, he wanted what, for him, was the best thing for Ireland. Now can you say that he is...
Here they constructed a memorial which celebrated revolution, faith and an idealized ancient world. At its center, this sculpture of the mythical Children of Lir condemned by an evil stepmother to wander the oceans as swans until the coming of Christ...
There is an Ireland shrouded in clich, of heroes and villains, lost battles and sad songs. Perched on the margins of Europe, a claustrophobic island cut off from the world, its people turned in upon themselves, victims of their own ancient hatreds an...
Back in Los Angeles, last-minute preparations are under way to get the dinosaurs ready for the public. It's only now that you get a sense of just how many people have been involved in creating this exhibition, from the artists to the designers, to th...
For those few dinosaurs from whom fossilized feathers had been found, largely in China, we can now put the finishing touches to our construction. So has this changed the way that artists are painting their reconstructions? I mean you often see some d...
Going back, say, ten years ago, would you ever imagine that you would have been able to tell what colour any dinosaurs would have been? No, I mean I think at that time I would have said that its one of the things we will never know. And so we just fo...
