‘Such a mix of people’: Ireland of 1926 was not monocultural, release of census shows

Archive is freely available online from 18 April, revealing the lives, occupations and secrets of 2.9m people The first years of independent Ireland tend to be remembered, if at all, as a dreary monochrome of parochialism and conservatism. After the blazing dramas of the 1916 rebellion and the 1919-1921 Anglo-Irish war, the infant state seemed to limp into a grey period of insularity, the dream of freedom giving way to anti-climax and drab conformity. Continue reading...

By Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent