Despite his derogatory epithet Denis Johnston’s play The Scythe and the Sunset is an interesting adjunct to the canon of literary works relating to the Easter Rising, informed by personal experience of the Insurrection: Denis and his family (and a parrot), were held hostage in their home at 61 Lansdowne […]
Denis Johnston
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The majority of our weekly posts relate directly to events surrounding the 1916 Rising. However, we also have the opportunity to delve deeper into the collections and realign the focus to include topics such as 20th century social and living conditions, fallout from the conflict, and significant commemorations etc. This […]
Henry Hanna (1871-1946), barrister and later High Court judge, was an engaged observer of events in Ballsbridge over the course of the Easter Rising. His diary (TCD MS 10066/192), a photocopied typescript, is now part of the papers of playwright Denis Johnston (1901-1984). The Hanna and Johnston families lived within […]
In the early hours of Easter Tuesday 1916, 61 Lansdowne Road, the Ballsbridge home of Judge William Johnston, his wife Kathleen, and their only son, the future playwright Denis, was occupied, under ‘amiable circumstances’, by four armed and apologetic Irish republicans. Denis, then a 14-year-old schoolboy home for the holidays […]