‘Glimpses of the Past’ series is one of the Nenagh Guardian’s best-loved features. The articles are researched with meticulous depth and conveyed with an entertaining style of writing that kept readers engaged throughout.
The series explores a captivating range of themes, from politics to religion, myth to emigration, and the socio-economic circumstances faced by our ancestors. Danny brings into focus unusual and remarkable happenings of yesteryear, among them the tragic murder story of ‘The Widow’s Curse’; the heated row that erupted between parties to ‘The Saga of the Puckaun Pump’; the extraordinary war of words between the two Nenagh belligerents in the ‘The Row with the Priest’, or the incredible occurrences in the ‘Robbery on the Road to Borrisokane’ - all actual events of the 19th Century, all recounted with a narrative style to fire the imagination.
‘Glimpses’ explores many social aspects of our local history, including the sadly often unrecognised role played by women in society. Another defining pillar of the series is the array of powerful personalities featured, among them ‘Paddy “Battleaxe” Gleeson, the colourful Mayor of Long Island’, or ‘Mick the Divil’, the Nenagh soldier turned troublemaker, whose memory is preserved in verse.
Danny Grace also wrote about the daring exploits of Timothy - “never a braver man filled a saddle” - O'Meara in the American Civil War; hero of the First World War Bob Brownlow, who left his job as a reporter with the Nenagh Guardian to join his four brothers fighting at the front; the tragedy of young medical student Francis Power of Hogan’s Pass, another victim of the bloody Irish Civil War.
This is but a snapshot of the Glimpses that Danny delivers in this book.
The chapters are a selection from the articles that featured in the Guardian over the years. Several of them have been rewritten based on further information gathered by the author after their publication.
