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Read Ireland Book Reviews, February 2000
Ashes by Gerard
Hannan
Ashes tells some of the stories of the
people of post-war Limerick who were happy to stay at home and help build
a city. Larry and Andrew are two boys from the lanes of Limerick who each
endured hardship and poverty but braved it out and refused to run off
to America just because life was tough.
’Tis In Me
Ass by Gerard Hannan
This is the simple story of life from
the late 1950s to the early 1980s for one Garryowen family who are direct
descendants of the people who lived in the post-war lanes of Limerick.
Cycling Around
Dublin by Jim Brady
Although the author is a Dublin, he was
as a young man not too familiar with a large section of Dublin city and
county. To familiarise himself with his beloved Dublin, he understood
pre-planned daily journeys on his sisters old bicycle during a severe
winter with only a few slices of bread and milk, plus a pencil and small
notebook to records his observations along the way. This account describes
in detail a number of outstanding characters whom he was fortunate enough
to meet on his ramblings. It is a most enjoyable narrative and captures
the wit, spirit and character of a very unique city.
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South William Street:
A Study of the Past, A Vision for the Future by Julie Craig
South William Street is named after William
Williams who laid out the street in 1676. The development was part of
the expansion of Dublin in the 17th century as the city outgrew its medieval
walls. It forms part of a patchwork of narrow streets that lie to the
South of Dame Street. Today, these streets form part of Dublin’s
principal shopping area. Despite some later 20th century interventions,
what we see today is largely a legacy from the 18th century. South William
Street is remarkable in that it has managed to retain so much of its early
building stock. It has a very rich architectural heritage and is home
to one of the largest and most complete groupings of merchants’ houses
in Dublin.
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Voyage of Hope:
Sail Chernobyl by Rory Coveney
This is the story of how five members
of the Coveney family from Cork circumnavigated the world in a small sailing
boat. Their aims were to raise 1 Million Irish pounds for the Chernobyl
Children’s Project and to increase awareness of the Chernobyl disaster
and its consequences. They travelled some of their 26,000 miles across
all the major oceans, encountering along the way an amazing variety of
people and places. Halfway through their trip the family crew learned
of the tragic accidental death of their father. They returned in bitter
grief - a journey described most poignantly in this book - to Cork for
his funeral and then resumed their voyage. Their voyage has captured the
imagination of thousands of people both in Ireland and abroad, with Irish
schoolchildren following the progress of the yacht live on the Internet.
A Bundle of Blessings
by Sister Stanislaus Kennedy
Sister Stanlislaus Kennedy is probably
Ireland’s most recognised nun, known both for her regular appearances
in the media and for her tireless campaigning on behalf of the homeless.
It is a measure of the esteem in which she is held that she was recently
appointed to the prestigious Council of State by the President of Ireland.
In this book she invites the reader to share her own spiritual journey
from her home in the beautiful area of Dingle in Co. Kerry, to her work
with the homeless in Dublin today. It also offers a simple method to help
the individual develop a deeper relationship with God in everyday events.
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Irish Education
for the 21st Century edited by Noel Ward and Triona Dooney
Universal primary education was a 19th
century development in this part of the world. The 20th century has seen
enormous expansion of the education system - about 50% of the age cohort
in Ireland now enter full-time higher education. What are the challenges
now facing the Irish education system and how does the system stand, on
the threshold of a new century, and what changes are required? This volume
of 21 essays addresses these questions and points the way ahead. Contributors
include the Minister for Education and Science, public representatives,
academics, teachers, education administrators and commentators, and prominent
teacher trade unionists. Their informed insights merit the attention of
everybody concerned with the Irish education system.
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The Falling Angels:
An Irish Romance by John Walsh
‘I was the kid who had hung out for far too long on the stairs
in his dressing-gown, eavesdropping on the sounds of adult conviviality,
but invited to enter the mysteries at last. This book is an exuberant
memoir of growing up London-Irish, of having two identities and being
caught between both. As a child, John Walsh found the Irishness of his
parents’ Battersea home bemusing. Here was an enclave of Ireland’s
mystic west, transported to London’s South Circular Road, where performance
and after-dinner singing were mandatory, where the gossip and visitors
were Irish, and where Catholic priests invaded the kitchen for tea, barm-brack
and a waltz with his mother. Ireland too was a puzzle. It was a family
holiday destination that meant rain, dry-stone walls and blue bubble gum.
It was a country that seemed to scatter its tribes of exiles across the
globe, a place his mother had escaped from and his father only longed
to return to. But as a teenager spellbound by Mick Jagger and images of
Catholic martyrdom, the author discovers an extended family in a Galway
he never know existed. In this new world of hoolies, spook-haunts and
wakes, and ultimately through the death of his mother, he begins to understand
the Irish Way of Life and Death and the heart of his Hibernian roots.
Witty, intimate and full of illuminating insights into exile, religion
and the culture of ‘belonging’, this book is a the passionate
tale of one man’s relationship with a mythic and mercurial homeland.
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The Story of Ireland:
A History of An Ancient Family and Their Country by William Magan
This book was originally intended as a
chronicle of a single family. It expanded in the writing into a full-scale
panorama of the country’s social and religious history. It accounts
fairly and clearly for the causes and nature of centuries of discord between
England and Ireland, at the same time using the long history of an ancient
family to given an authentic picture of Irish life. William Magan descends
directly from one of the oldest Irish royal houses, the O’Connors
of Connaught. The blood of his Celtic forebears was mingled with that
of the pre-Celtic, or Pictish, rulers who held sway in Ireland before
the first known invasions. The Magan family, whose ancestral home is close
to the geographical centre of Ireland, split into Catholic and Protestant
branches only in the eighteenth century. This book was first published
in 1983 as ‘Umma-More’. This thoroughly updated edition offer
a new generation of readers an absorbing and impartial account of the
passage of an old Celtic family through two thousand years of Irish history,
offering insights into both the country and its people and how the English
and Irish have regarded each other over the centuries.
Something for
the Weekend by Pauline McGlynn
Leo Street is fed up. It’s her thirtieth
birthday and it’s raining again. Her home town of Dublin is no ‘New
Barcelona’; her job as a private investigator brings nothing but
heartache and unpaid bills; and Barry, her permanently resting actor boyfriend,
treats her house like a free hotel - without giving her the benefits of
room service. So she’s rather relieved when a loathsome client sends
her away to County Kildare to spy on his supposedly cheating wife. The
one catch is she has to masquerade as a member of a cookery course and
the only piece of culinary equipment Leo can handle is a tin opener. As
she strips away layers of marital infidelity - not to mention several
other scandalous secrets - Leo battles with bread-making and brulee. But
where will it all end - in triumph or tragedy? This novel introduces the
reader to an irresistible heroine and marks the debut of a talented comic
writer.
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The Long Gestation:
Irish Nationalist Life 1891 - 1918 by Patrick Maume
In this book the author examines a period
of history commonly thought of as one in which politics were moribund
and which was dominated by the cultural and literary revival. He challenges
this view, arguing for an organic and integrated understanding of the
period. He discusses the nationalist tradition inherited from the 18th
century Patriots and Young Ireland that was transmitted to a newly literate
mass audience. He traces its gaps and incoherences and shows how it re-invented
itself in order to produce the Irish-Ireland movement of the 1890s. He
pays particular attention to the activities of the various separatist
societies grouped under the title Sinn Fein. In the process he traces
the rise of Sinn Fein which led to its spectacular victory over the Redmonites
in the 1918 election.
The Resurrection
of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party 1916-1923 by Michael Laffan
Between 1916 and 1923, Ireland experienced
a political as well as military revolution. This book examines how, after
the Easter Rising of 1916, radical revolutionaries formed a precarious
coalition with (relatively) moderate politicians, and analyses the political
organisation of Irish republicanism during a crucial period. The new Sinn
Fein party routed its enemies, co-operated uneasily with the underground
Irish government which it had helped create, and achieved most of its
objectives before disintegrating in 1923. Its rapid collapse should not
distract from its achievements - in particular its role in ‘democratising’
the Irish revolution. Its successors have dominated the political life
of independent Ireland. The book studies in some detail the party’s
membership and ideology, and also its often tense relationship with the
Irish Republican Army. A final chapter examines the fluctuating careers
of the later Sinn Fein parties throughout the rest of the 20th century.
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The Politics
of Language in Ireland, 1366-1922: A Sourcebook by Tony Crowley
Collected in this book for the first time
are texts on the politics of language from the date of the first legislation
against Irish, the Statute of Kilkelly of 1366, to the constitution of
the Irish Free State in 1922. The author’s introduction connects
these texts to current debates, taking the Belfast Agreement as an example,
and illustrates how the language debates continue to have historical resonance
today. Divided into six historical sections with detailed introductions,
this unique sourcebook includes familiar texts such as Spenser’s
‘View of the Present State of Ireland’ and essays and letters
by Yeats and Synge, alongside less familiar writings, from the introductions
to the first Irish-English and English-Irish dictionaries to the Preface
to the New Testament in Irish (1602).
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The Irish Constabularies
1822-1922: A Century of Policing in Ireland by Donal O’Sullivan
This first account of the Irish constabularies
is a major contribution to Irish historical studies. Throughout the century
in question, policing stood at the perilous intersection of politics,
religion and the relationship between Britain and Ireland. The author
has over three decades researched this history, much of the essential
material of which had been obscured by continuing political sensitivities.
From the Constabulary Act of 1822 and the organisation of the County Constabulary,
the story moves through difficult and turbulent decades of the Famine,
1848, the Belfast Riots and the Fenian Rising, encompassing the birth
of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Land War. In the later years of
the 19th century, the emphasis is on more routine police work, with the
period of the growth of Irish nationalism in the early 20th century being
a peaceful time for the RIC. But as Sinn Fein and the Volunteers grew
in strength, attitudes to the RIC changed and it came under sustained
attack during the force’s final difficult years leading to disbandment.
A History of
Settlement in Ireland edited by Terry Barry
For decades, disciplinary and methodological
boundaries meant that the study of Irish settlement history did not develop
as fully as it might otherwise have done. This stimulating and thought-provoking
volume is an overview of the settlement history of Ireland from prehistory
to the 20th century, examined in unprecedented scholarly detail. The ten
chapters provide wide-ranging and up-to-date interpretation by contributors
who are all experts in the periods about which they write. They analyse
issues such as settlement change and distribution within the context of
environment, demography and culture, and set the agenda for future research
in this expanding area. This book marks a major contribution to the understanding
of the human impact on the Irish landscape.
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The Easter
Rising by Michael Foy and Brian Barton
More comprehensive and adhering more closely
to the events than any account previously written, this important new
treatment of the 1916 Easter Rising draws on an impressive range of hitherto
unused primary sources - some closed to the public until recently, while
others, long available, have been neglected by historians. It contains
recently released transcripts of the court martial trials of the executed
rebel leaders, including the cases for the prosecution and defence, plus
the testimonies of the witnesses. It graphically describes the execution
process and - drawing on Sir John Maxwell’s private papers - the
justification given for imposing the death sentence in each case. Letters,
diaries and recollections of participants and eyewitnesses, complement
the wealth of previously unpublished material drawn from the major archive
centres in Ireland and Britain. This book challenges many widely-held
assumptions about the Easter Rising. It illuminates aspects of that fateful
week, and provides a synthesis of this seminal event in 20th century Irish
history.
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Aftermath:
Post-Rebellion Insurgency in Wicklow 1799-1803 by Ruan O’Donnell
County Wicklow, scene of some of the heaviest
and intense fighting of the Rebellion in 1798, remained the most consistently
disturbed part of Ireland until 1803. Militant factions of battle-hardened
United Irishmen held out in the vastnesses of the Wicklow mountains and
confounded every strategy devised to defeat them over five years. This
book investigates the underlying causes of this phenomenon and provides
a detailed account of the experiences of all the major groupings, including
the little known elements led by James Hughes and Michael Dalton. Myths
regarding the dynamic Michael Dwyer of Imaal are dispelled by the first
detailed examination and critical evaluation of his insurgent career.
All Wiclow rebel activity, however, is assessed in terms of its nature,
compatibility with the cause of the United Irishmen and influence on post-Rebellion
Ireland. The appendices include a list of 1,100 identified Wicklow rebels
and reprints many documents of historical importance.
History of
the Catholic Diocese of Dublin edited by James Kelly and Daire Keogh
The specially commissioned essays in this
volume chart the development of the diocese of Dublin from its foundations
to modern times. The authors study the unique experience of the Reformation
in Dublin, the Catholic response, and the effects on the diocese of the
Penal Laws. Several chapters concentrate on the careers of Dublin’s
archbishops, including John Troy, Daniel Murray, William Walsh, Paul Cardinal
Cullen and John Charles McQuaid, and their effect on the life and politics
of Church and State as seen in the experience of the diocese. Further
chapters analyse 19th century church architecture, the growth of the religious
orders in the diocese, and the practise of religion among the Dublin laity
in the period following the formation of the Irish Free State.
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