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Robert Arthur Stradling is professor emeritus of history at Cardiff University, Wales, and a leading authority on the Spanish Civil War. He has published extensively on the topic and made a number of documentaries for Spanish television and BBC Wales.

Swythamley Historical Society (SHS) was founded on 1 September 2003 to promote interest in the history of the Swythamley Estate and the surrounding area of the Staffordshire Moorlands, north Staffordshire, on the Cheshire border in England.

The City of Dublin Championships was established in 2007 as an annual international competition. It takes place over two weekends each year, for graded dancers in January and Open Championship and graded adult dancers in March. The competition has attracted participants from all over Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Norway, Finland, Russia, Australia, Japan, Taipei, Czech Republic, Italy, Israel, The Netherlands, and Austria. One of the unique aspects of the championships is the City of Dublin Plate Competition (junior and senior), in which the top three dancers in each championship compete for the overall champion award (plate). Instead of the traditional costumes, the dancers must wear black outfits for the plate competitions.

The Irish National Youth Ballet Company (originally named the Irish Junior Ballet Company) was co-founded by Anne Campbell-Crawford and Professor Jean Wallis of the Akademie der Tanzen, Heidelberg, Germany. The company had its first auditions in 1995 and gave its first performance in February 1996 at the Royal Hibernian, Gallaher Gallery, Dublin. Its dancers are aged 10-21 years, and a junior level for children aged 8 and over was established in September 1999. The company aims to provide young dancers an enriching experience during their formative years and to give them a flavour of what it might be like to pursue a career in dance.

The Irish Press was a national daily newspaper founded by Éamon de Valera from money collected during a series of fundraising drives to finance the first Dáil. The drives were terminated following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The trustee of the funds, Stephen O'Mara (1884-1959) considered himself as the exchequer to the Irish Free State and refused to hand over the funds to the pro-Treaty administration, which resulted in his imprisonment in 1922-1923. The bulk of the money was left in various banks in New York and remained untouched until 1927, when a court in New York ordered that money outstanding to bond holders must be paid back. Having anticipated such a ruling, de Valera’s legal team invited bond holders to sign over their bonds, for which they were paid 58 cents to the dollar. The funds thus accumulated were used as capital to launch the Irish Press, with Frank Gallagher as its first editor. The paper remained under the control of de Valera and his family and as a consequence its views followed closely those of the FIanna Fáil party. At its peak, the paper had 200,000 subscribers. The paper was wound down in 1995, following several years of financial difficulties.

The National Association of Old IRA was a non-political organisation founded in 1923 to end the schism within Irish republicanism and bring about peace among former comrades. It also looked after the welfare of veterans and commemorated events important to its members. The name Old IRA was chosen to distinguish the Association from the anti-Treaty IRA, which by the 1930s had become an illegal organisation.

The Association’s mode of organisation was identical to that adopted by the IRA during the War of Independence. For example, county Limerick had been organised in West, Mid and East Battalions, and the Old IRA in Limerick likewise had West, Mid and East branches. The Association took the form of a social club organising social gatherings and sporting events. It also aided its members in the application for military pensions for the active participants in the conflicts of 1916-1921. It proved immensely popular and attracted prominent members, among them Simon Donnelly, Frank Thornton, Donal O’Hannigan and Liam Deasy. The Association avoided becoming embroiled in politics, although it did at one stage consider founding a political party. It enjoyed its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, when it took a leading role in campaigns to end partition.

The National Association of Old IRA survived until the 1980s, when its mantle was assumed by the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen (ONE).

The Royal Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company based at the Royal Opera House in London. It was founded in 1931 by Ninette de Valois and was granted a royal charter in 1956.