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BBC News
By Ciaran McCauley
image captionThe slippers were donated to Ireland s National Museum in 1958
What kind of revolutionary leader would kick back in a pair of slippers like these?
They are not your ordinary pair of house shoes - a vibrant blue, lined with lush wool.
And, the detail that is the most intriguing - the staring green eyes of a wolf, its tongue slightly protruding like an emoji designed by the Brothers Grimm.
They look almost out-of-the-box brand new. And yet they re about 100 years old.
We know this because these slippers belonged to Michael Collins, the Irish republican who led the military campaign for Ireland s independence a century ago.
BBC News
By Ciaran McCauley
image captionThe slippers were donated to Ireland s National Museum in 1958
What kind of revolutionary leader would kick back in a pair of slippers like these?
They are not your ordinary pair of house shoes - a vibrant blue, lined with lush wool.
And, the detail that is the most intriguing - the staring green eyes of a wolf, its tongue slightly protruding like an emoji designed by the Brothers Grimm.
They look almost out-of-the-box brand new. And yet they re about 100 years old.
We know this because these slippers belonged to Michael Collins, the Irish republican who led the military campaign for Ireland s independence a century ago.
The story behind Michael Collins wolf slippers
Updated / Tuesday, 2 Mar 2021
08:12
What the Big Fellow kept under his bed in Dublin. Photo: Brenda Malone, Curator of Military History at the National Museum
Analysis: they re a well-worn pair of size 9, bright blue wool slippers with a wolf s head stitched on the toe caps
Most museums only have space to display a tiny fraction of their collection at any given time. The rest languish in storage, thousands of objects hidden in boxes and cupboards, awaiting a turn when fashion or interest dictates.
On my travels across Ireland researching my book,
The Darkness Echoing, I visited over 200 museums and heritage sites, looking for objects that lingered in the mind long after my visit was over. Occasionally, I was lucky enough to be offered a sneak peek behind the public display, and one of those rare treats came when Brenda Malone, curator of military history at the National Museum, allowed me into the stores at Collins Barracks.
How Brexit shows the vital importance of Ireland s seas and ports
Updated / Monday, 1 Feb 2021
13:54
According to Nicholas Allen, author of the recently published
(Oxford University Press, 2020), Ireland is an island that forgot itself . UCC’s Claire Connolly has identified how Ireland’s relationship with its seas, coasts and ports has long been uncomfortable and defined by feelings of unease, dizziness and sea-sickness. It s one shaped by the violence of empire and a political culture which attaches primary importance to agriculture, land and land ownership.
While Ireland’s religious, industrial, demographic and geo-political histories have all been shaped by the sea, the maritime features surprisingly little in the Irish cultural imagination. There are, as Gillian O’Brien’s excellent