DEASÚN BREATNACH was an extraordinary man. His wife Luci (Lucila Hellman de Menchaca) was equally special and together they had six talented and gifted children: Diarmuid, Osgur, Caoilte, Oisín, Cormac and Lucilita. Free article

SO MUCH of John Maclean’s story will resonate with Irish republicans – the trumped-up, politically-motivated charges; the speech from the dock that indicts the powerful; the hunger strike in prison and a grassroots campaign for his release. Free article

BY the end of 1973, the armed conflict in the Six Counties had been going on for four years. British military repression in nationalist areas was intense and hundreds of Irish political prisoners were interned in Long Kesh and other prisons and hundreds more were held as convicted prisoners in the North, the 26 Counties and England. Premium service article

PEADAR WHELAN, a former political prisoner who learned much of his Irish in Long Kesh, opens up a challenging debate on the back of the recent publication of Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh’s new book, Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish Language in the North of Ireland. The subject of the book is the revival of the Irish language and the importance of the republican prisoners in that revival but, Peadar Whelan argues, it develops “a polemic around resistance and revival tied into our struggle against Britain’s rule in our country over the centuries”. Premium service article