Paul Tempan

‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Excited about our next event, a talk by Judith Acheson, "The Story of Nettlefield", on Thursday 30th April, 7pm

linenhall.com/event/ptolem...

www.belfaststreetnames.com/newsletter/ See what we have achieved in our first year

UPNS lecture 8pm tonight: Justin Ó Gliasáin on Place-names of Inishowen www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-deirdr...

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President Obama SLAMS the trump admin's "unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom" starting with Harvard, but leading elsewhere unless Harvard takes a stand, and others follow suit. Thank you, President Obama.

Looking forward to the annual conference of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland this weekend in Stirling. www.snsbi.org.uk/2025_Stirlin...

Fr Martin Magill and I have been invited to give a talk on street-names to the North Belfast Historical Soc, this Thursday, April 10, 7.30pm. I'm looking forward to it very much. I've prepared some new material on Ligoniel as a mill village and streets connected with Disraeli, politician and author.

Lord Sumption “calls-out” MAGA’s dubious intervention into UK “Free-speech”….. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Lord Sumption on the US using UK abortion clinic protests as a free speech stick with which to beat the UK. But as Sumption rightly added, there is no free speech infringement here. (And besides, a populist Conservative govt with a solid majority voted for abortion clinic buffer zones.)

Had this article about historian John J. Marshall published in the latest issue of the Ulster Journal of Archaeology

Another reflection on a superb night at The Duncairn looking at Belfast Street Names with Martin Magill, Brian Houston, Linda Ervine and Paul Tempan as part of 4 Corners Festival Belfast 2025 virtualmethodist.blogspot.com/2025/02/4-co...

I also gleaned from this programme that one of the reasons Samuel Johnson went with Boswell on "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" was his determination to expose Macpherson's fraud. They had a heated correspondence and it nearly came to "claymores at dawn".

Also featured were the short stories of Brian Friel (another writer who sometimes provoked adulation and sometimes was accused of mythologising, particularly for Translations). I love his farce The Communication Cord.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand...

Ossian was supposedly a 3rd century Gaelic poet and people raved about his verse, from Napoleon to Queen Victoria, even after the work was exposed as a forgery. It made think that one of the reasons Walter Scott became so popular a few decades later was that he embodied the Ossian ideal.

Front Row on Radio 4 last night featured a new show by Scottish poet "Through The Shortbread Tin" centering on the great Ossian myth / hoax / masterpiece (you choose) created in 1760 by James Macpherson.

www.snsbi.org.uk/2025_Stirlin... Very interesting programme. Really looking forward to this year's conference. I'll be giving a brief report on the Belfast Street Names community history project, which has been running for a year now.

www.belfaststreetnames.com/great-scott/ A new blog about Sir Walter Scott, his cultural influence in Ireland and his legacy, including Belfast street names which honour his works

www.facebook.com/share/p/1KyC... Looking forward to this tomorrow.