Hello and welcome to this week’s issue of Ireland’s Own.

Our cover story this week is on Douglas Hyde, who became Ireland’s First President eighty years ago this month. Dr. Douglas Hyde, the son of an Anglo-Irish Church of Ireland minister, was formally installed as the first President of Ireland, writes Ray Cleere.

Miss Flanagan returns with another investigation in ‘A Pedalling Crime’. In his Role of the Irish in WW2 series, Cathal Coyle profiles the Very Rev. Cyril Patrick Crean, Chaplain and Dubliner, who landed at Juno Beach on D-Day.

Shane Cochrane investigates the phenomenon of phantom priests  and PJ Conlon, the first Irish Major League baseball player since 1945, is profiled by Cathal Coyle. James Connolly, a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, was born on 5th June, 1868, to Irish parents in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, an area then known as ‘Little Ireland’. Pauline Murphy marks the sesquicentennial of his birth by looking at two songs associated with the executed leader.

The Connemara Pony is the focus of part one of an occasional series on Irish horse and pony breeds by Patricia M. Jenkins. Our original short story is The Tartan Rug by Wyn Cave.

In his Witness Statements series, Eamonn Duggan writes about ‘Procuring Arms and Gathering Intelligence’. Eamonn examines the testimony of Dubliner Nicholas Laffan to the Bureau of Military History. 

We have all this for you to enjoy alongside your regular favourites including Stranger Than Fiction, Cassidy Says, Dan Conway, jokes, songs, puzzles and much much more. Enjoy the read and what remains of the good weather, and I will look forward to talking to you all again next week, please God.                                                                                

                                                                                                               Best wishes,

Seán Nolan, Editor, Ireland’s Own