The discovery of Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance 107 years after it sank beneath the ice of Antarctica made news all over the world including this extraordinary footage of the ship on the Irish Times website. Shackleton (1874-1922) who was born in Kilkea, County Kildare, led three expeditions to the Antarctic. Read more about him in the Irish Dictionary of Biography here, and you can watch our fascinating 2021 talk on the broader subject of the Irish and polar exploration, given by Claire Warrior of Royal Museums Greenwich, here.

To mark St Patrick's Day, the Skibbereen & District Historical Society had this article on Maud Gonne's visit to Skibbereen on 17 March 1902. She was invited to deliver a lecture by the Skibbereen branch of the Young Ireland Society.

Festival contributor Donal Lowry will give a talk on 22 March on The office of Governor as the Crown’s representative, symbolising `the permanence both of the authority of the Northern Ireland Government and the union with Great Britain’, 1921-73. More details about his online talk are available here and there is also a blog piece on the subject on the History of Parliament website.

Finally HistFest is a history festival based at the British Library in London, and they've just announced their 2022 programme. Like ours, it will be a mixture of in-person and online. They've got some great speakers and talks.