‘How I stumbled on Stormont’s new policy of extreme censorship - which means we’ll understand NI’s past less fully’.

That was the stark headline on a recent comment piece from my colleague Sam McBride – the Belfast Telegraph’s Northern Ireland editor.

He discovered the unannounced policy whilst exploring declassified files in London - a policy which has been used to cover-up official attitudes to the Famine.

Sam McBride joins Ciarán Dunbar to explain the story behind the headline.

Stormont’s extreme censorship of Famine remarks – and how we unravelled it

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Stephen McCullagh has been found guilty of murdering Lurgan woman Natalie McNally.

The jury unanimously convicted 36-year-old McCullagh, of Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, of killing the 32-year-old mother to be in December 2022.

The four-week trial heard how McCullagh murdered Ms McNally after setting up a “false alibi” that he was livestreaming a video gaming session on YouTube.

McCullagh has been given a life-sentence.

Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Allison Morris, who was following the trial in court.

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IRA leader Rory O’Connor was once a close comrade of fellow republican Michael Collins and Kevin O’Higgins - indeed he was O’Higgins best man.

But just over a year later after the wedding, O’Higgins signed his friend’s death warrant.

O’Connor’s execution along with Liam Mellows, Dick Barrett and Joe McKelvey, added to the bitterness of Ireland’s civil war and made O’Connor a republican martyr, albeit a forgotten one.

In ‘To defend the Republic’, the first biography of O’Connor’s life, historian Gerard Shannon tells the story of this enigmatic IRA figure.

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