Life
b. nr. Liverpool of Irish parents; thesis on the Poor Laws, Ph.D (TCD);
Deputy Director of the Belfast Historical Foundation, 1987; Research Fellow,
University of Liverpool, 1990; This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine
1845-52 (1994), Irish Post Award in 1995; Death Dealing Famine:
The Great Hunger in Ierland (1997); A Disunited Kingdom? Ireland,
Scotland and Wales 1800-1949 (1999).
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Works
This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52 (Dublin: Gill &Macmillan
1994), Death Dealing Famine: The Great Hugner in Ireland (London:
Pluto 1997); A Disunited Kingdom? Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1800-1949 (Cambridge UP 1999).
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Commentary
Interview [Focus 10], British Association for Irish Studies Newsletter,
20 (October 1999), pp.2-5, discusses position of Ireland in the
Union and the development of English nationalism post-devolution; disparages
Lord Russell’s failure to stop export of food from Ireland in 1846-52
in comparison with the different measures taken by the Castle in 1782-83;
‘utterly failed to [provide] a humanitarian response to the escalating
mass mortality among a starving people who should never hav been seen
as marginal within the much trumpeted United Kingdom .. The british Treasury
operated a system of relief which increasingly became a mixture of minimal
relief, punitive qualifying criteria and preferred free enterprise. Famine
problems in Ireland were a low priority to governmen at the centre of
a large and still expanding empire. […. &c.].
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