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Read Ireland Book Reviews, November 2002
An End to Flight by Vincent Banville
Michael Painter, an Irishman teaching in a Catholic Mission
School in Nigeria, is, by temperament and choosing, an observer. Boredom
and the fear of emotional involvement seem always to prevent him from
taking a decisive leap. And so, as the relief planes lift the European
doctors, teachers and priests out of a country convulsed by a violent
Civil War they cannot comprehend, Painter remains behind. Still in search
of something to give meaning to his life, Painter is submerged in the
conflict as rival armies shuttle back and forth across the enormous battlefield,
wreaking identical cruelties, slaughtering and being slaughtered. For
Painter, as for the starving Biafrans, there is no real end to flight.
In a spare, muted style, Vincent Banville communicates the horror of Africa
at war in a work of extraordinary power and depth. This is a timely reissue
of a celebrated and prize-winning novel that paints a picture of the beginnings
of a struggle that endures to this day.
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Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor
In the bitter winter of 1847, from an Ireland torn by
injustice and natural disaster, the ‘Star of the Sea’ sets sail for New
York. On board are hundreds of fleeing refugees, some brimming with optimism,
many more desperate. Among them is a maidservant with a devastating secret,
bankrupt Lord Merridith and his wife and children, an aspiring novelist,
a maker of revolutionary ballads, all braving the Atlantic in search of
a new home. Each is connected more deeply than they can possibly know.
But a camoflauged killer is stalking the decks; hungry for the vengeance
that will bring absolution. The twenty-six-day journey will see many lives
end, other begin afresh. Passionate loves are tenderly recalled, ducked
responsibilities regretted too late; profound relationships shockingly
unearthed where once it seemed there were none. In a spellbinding story
of tragedy and mercy, love and healing, the further the ship sails towards
the Promised Land, the more her passengers seem moored to a past which
will never let them go. A novel as urgently contemporary in its preoccupations
as it is historically revealing, this gripping and compassionate tale
builds with the pace of a thriller to an unforgettable conclusion.
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Collected Short Stories by Michael
McLaverty
This book is a handsome illustrated edition of the short
fiction of an Irish writer who has been favorably compared to Chekhov.
One of Ireland’s most distinguished short story writers, McLaverty wrote
with acute precision and intensity of the northern landscapes of his homeland
- the lonely hill farms, rough island terrain and the tight backstreets
of Belfast. Focusing on moments of passion, wonder or bitter disenchantment
in lives that are a continuous struggle towards the light, these stories,
in the compassion of the tone and the spare purity of the language, are
nothing short of masterly. Illustrated with specially commissioned wood
engravings by Barbara Childs, and including an introduction by Seamus
Heaney and a foreword by Sophia Hilton.
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Shroud by John Banville
Axel Vander, celebrated academic and man of culture,
is spending his twilight years on the west coast of America, when, out
of the blue, a letter arrives hinting at secrets he has been hiding for
fifty years. To find out just how much the writer knows about his past,
Vander arranges to meet her in Turin. But he is thrown into emotional
turmoil by this encounter with Cass Cleave, a deeply troubled young woman
desperate to discover a reason to continue living; and the meeting of
the two leads inexorably towards disaster. Written in faultless, almost
painfully beautiful prose, this is a novel that is not afraid to ask deep
questions, nor to answer them emphatically. It is a richly rewarding work
from one of the most accomplished Irish novelists of his generation.
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The Story of Lucy Gault by William
Trevor
Captain Gault had seen off the three intruders easily
enough. They had come in the night with the intention of firing the house,
but a single shot had sent them scuttling back into the darkness. One,
though, had been wounded and for that the Gaults were not forgiven: sooner
or later there would be trouble again. Other big-house families had been
driven out - the Morells from Clashmore, the Gouvernets, the Priors, and
the Swifts. It was time to go. But Lucy, soon to be nine, the only child
of the household, could not bear the thought of leaving Lahardane. Her
world was the old house itself, the woods of the glen, the farm animals,
and the walk along the seashore to school. All of that she loved and as
the day of departure grew closer she determined that this exile should
not take place. But chance changed everything, bringing about a calamity
so terrible that it might have been a punishment, so vicious that it blighted
the lives of all the Gaults for many years to come. This novel by one
of Ireland’s finest writers begins in rural Cork in 1921, in a country
still in turmoil. The old order has fragmented; a way of life is already
over. Trevor brilliantly conveys the disquiet and confusion that colour
the story of Lucy Gault as it’s told while happens, in towns and countryside,
and told again when passing time has made it different.
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Authenticity by Deirdre Madden
After a brilliant youth, the painter Roderic Kennedy’s
life has been overtaken by a series of crises - alcoholism, the failure
of his marriage to an Italian woman, and estrangement from his three daughters
following his return to Ireland. When he meets Julia Fitzpatrick, twenty
years younger and also an artist, it seems as if this period of turbulence
and misfortune from which he has been struggling to emerge is at an end.
But when Julia then meets William Armstrong, a middle-aged lawyer, it
sets in motion a chain of events which, in the course of the following
year, has dramatic and unforeseen consequences for all three of them.
Deirdre Madden’s novel is her most ambitious to date; both a moving love
story and a thought-provoking meditation upon the nature of painting.
It is above all an exploration of what it means to be an artist in contemporary
society.
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Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry
’Oh, Kelsha is a distant place, over the mountains from
everywhere. You go over the mountains to get there, and eventually , through
dreams.’ ‘I can picture the two children in their coats arriving. It is
the start of the summer and all the customs of winter and spring are behind
us. Not that those customer are tended to now, much.’ Annie Dunne and
her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful
part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them the old green roads
are being tarred, cars are being purchased, and a way of life is about
to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their hill in Kelsha, cherishing
everything. When Annie’s nephew and his wife are set to go to London to
find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister,
are brought down to spend the summer with their great-aunt. It is a strange
chance for happiness for Annie. But against this happiness moves the figure
of Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, threatening to
drive Annie from her last niche of safety in the world. The world of childish
innocence also proves darkened and puzzling to her, and she struggles
to find clear ground, clear light - to preserve her sense of love and
place against these subtle forces of disquiet. A summer of adventure,
pain, delight and ultimately epiphany unfolds for both the children and
their elderly caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of
innocence, loss and reconciliation from one of Ireland’s finest young
writers.
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In the Forest by Edna O’Brien
The popular Irish author returns to the countryside of
western Ireland in this controversial book. As with her previous novel,
‘Wild Decembers’, murder is again the story’s climax, but the killer’s
motives are deeply buried in his mind. Michen O’Kane has lost his mother
as a boy and, by the age of ten, is incarcerated for petty crimes in juvenile
detention centres, ‘the places named after saints.’ But his problems go
beyond early loss and sexual abuse - the killing instinct is already kindled
in him. Fearful neighbours name him the Kinderschreck, someone of whom
small children are afraid. As in Greek tragedy, this novel is not without
unwitting victims for sacrifice - a radiant young woman, her little son,
and a trusting priest, all despatched to the forest of O’Kane’s unbridled,
deranged fantasies. Based on true events that still resonate in this part
of Ireland, this riveting, frightening and brilliantly told novel reminds
the reader that anything can happen ‘outside the boundary of mother and
child’, when protection isn’t afforded to either perpetrator or victim.
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My Lover’s Lover by Maggie O’Farrell
Lily meets Marcus, an elusive but magnetic architect,
on a pavement outside a gallery. Within a week she has moved into his
echoing warehouse apartment in East London. But nothing could have prepared
her for what she finds there. A distinct presence haunts the flat, that
of a woman who seems to have left in a hurry, leaving behind a single
dress hanging in the wardrobe, a mysterious mark on the wall and the suffocating,
lingering odour of jasmine. Marcus, deep in private grief, refuses to
talk about it. Only the flat’s other inhabitant, Aidan, seems to understand
Lily’s unease, but he won’t explain or even discuss what took place before
her arrival. Who was this woman? And what exactly were the circumstances
of her sudden disappearance? This book, from one of Ireland’s most exciting
young writers, is a sensual and unnerving story of passion, attachment
and the strange, indissoluble connection we have with our partners’ former
lovers. It is a gripping novel about how, even at the end of a relationship,
everything is far from over.
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Great Irish Drinking Stories edited
and introduced by Peter Haining
Ireland’s drinking culture has been exported around the
world and given the Irish a reputation as an entertaining and talkative
nation. It has been an inspiration for Ireland’s other great export, her
writers. From James Joyce, Flann O’Brien and Brendan Behan to Roddy Doyle
and Patrick McCabe, all have written about drinking and its effects, the
stuff of life and sometimes the troubling consequences. The writers in
this anthology are: Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Roddy Doyle, Patrick
McCabe, Frank O’Connor, Shane MacGowan, William Trevor, Malachy McCourt,
Bernard Shaw, Peter Tremayne, Robert J. Martin, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh,
Flann O’Brien, Marian Keyes, Sean O’Faolain, Edna O’Brien, Bernard MacLaverty,
Brian Friel, Sean O’Casey, J.M. Synge, Glenn Patterson, William Carleton,
Lynn Doyle and Eamonn Sweeney
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People and Places: Ireland Yearbook
2003 from Appletree Press
This attractive yearbook - which makes a distinguished
desk or engagement diary - contains 28 beautifully reproduced Irish paintings
from the Fine Art Collections of the Museums and Galleries of Northern
Ireland. Carefully selected works on the these of the people and places
of Ireland demonstrate the variety of approaches artists have taken to
capturing the Irish people and the landscape in which they live. Both
well and lesser known artists’ works have been included, dating the from
the 19th century through to the late 20th. Each plate is accompanied by
an informative and extended caption with full details of the work and
the artists. Stylish, practical and enlightening, this diary-yearbook
is a window on Ireland through exceptional eyes and would make a wonderful
gift
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Decorative Dublin by Peter Pearson
This book is a stunning and fascinating journey through
the streets and history of the capital city. Dublin’s buildings are a
repository of the city’s stories and history; its fashions, grand families
and fine architectural legacy. The craftsmen who decorated these buildings
left a rich legacy of beautiful minutiae as well as large, impressive
works. This book is a record and a celebration of the city’s decorative
details in iron, brick, stone, glass, plaster, terracotta, wood, stucco;
its fanlights, doors and windows, coats of arms, follies, towers - and
more. It is a unique, historical record of a unique city.
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Irish Gardens by Olda FitzGerald
The gardens of Ireland are famed for their great beauty,
variety and distinctive charm. Fine rain, soft sunshine, the warmth of
the Gulf Stream, and the dramatic settings of rivers and mountains combine
to create the perfect conditions for the creation of magical gardens of
breathtaking diversity. This enchanting book celebrates twenty of the
best Irish gardens, telling their fascinating stories, revealing their
secrets and evoking their particular atmospheres. They range from historical
gardens like Mount Stewart in County Down, with its eclectic collection
of Moorish and Art Deco styles, and lush vegetable gardens like Ballymaloe
in Cork, to wild, romantic paradises like Ilnacullin in Bantry Bay, planted
with exotics from Tasmania, China and Japan. Many of the gardens are newly
planted or recently restored and have never been written about or photographed
before. A personal friend of many of the owners, the author paints an
informed and intimate portrait of these gardens and the people who created
and maintain them. Each garden is explored, its design and planting analysed
and its layout illustrated by a detailed plan. A comprehensive Visitor’s
guide gives addresses and opening times. Sumptuous photography conveys
the unique mood of these very special and intriguing gardens.
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Living in Ireland by Barbara and
Rene Stoeltie
Few countries conjure up images of idyllic country houses
and snug rambling mansions as readily as Ireland does. The mere mention
of Ireland prompts thoughts of fairytale castles and cottages, rolling
emerald hills dotted with sheep and cows, jagged cliffs and crashing waves,
and mystic stone circles and enchanted gardens. The houses presented here
live up our wildest expectations: from an eccentric artist’s retreat in
a disused school to a haunted country estate enclosed by high walls, to
a magnificent house in the Palladian style 85 and more. Of special interest
is a medieval fort, Leixlip Castle, belonging to Desmond and Penny Guinness
of the world-famous brewers.
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Irish Cathedrals, Churches and Abbeys
edited by Brendan O’Neill
From the early High Crosses of the first millennium,
through to the decorative interiors of the twentieth-century Arts and
Crafts movement - and beyond, Irish ecclesiastical architecture encompasses
a range of styles within its 1500-year history. This book presents an
overview of church-building in Ireland. Beginning with the earliest surviving
monastic ruins, the author charts a course through to contemporary architectural
design and the award-winning Church of St Aengus - declared Building of
the Twentieth Century by the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland.
Illustrated with many beautiful colour photographs throughout, this book
is an attractive addition to the churches, abbeys and cathedrals which
make up a major part of Ireland’s architectural heritage.
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Irish Castles and Historic Houses
edited by Brendan O’Neill
Irish castles and tower-houses range from Carrickfergus
to Blarney Castle - the real-life home of the Blarney Stone. Ireland also
has many great historic houses and stately homes, designed by amongst
others, John Nash, James Gandon, and Edwin Landseer Lutyens. This book
presents an overview of the castles and historic houses in Ireland, beginning
with the earliest surviving defensive fortifications, through to historic
houses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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The Irish: A Photohistory by Sean
Sexton and Christine Kinealy
The first Irish photographs date from 1840, a year after
Louis Daguerre announced to the world his discovery of the photographic
process. In the century that followed, Ireland was to know tragedy and
triumph, bitter struggle and agonized compromise. In 1840 no one could
possibly have forseen the catastrophe that was about to unfold in Ireland.
The Great Famine was to kill over a million Irish poor people between
1846 and 1851, and force an even greater number to flee the horrors of
their homeland. In the following decades, Irish political life was dominated
by the struggle for land rights, for Home Rule, and ultimately for independence.
As that story unfolds throughout this book, the reader encounters inspirational
leaders and impatient rebels, and their campaigns of persuasion and violence.
We glimpse too the injustices that inspired them, above all the mass eviction
of destitute peasants from their homes and lands by the heavy hand of
the law. Yet these images do much more than tell a gripping political
and historical story. They give an insight into a people, a landscape,
and a lost way of life. They evoke the grandeur of life in the Big House,
home and symbol of the Anglo-Irish elite. They reveal the hard labour
of rural survival: cutting peat for fuel, fishing, gathering seaweed and
tilling the soil, against the magnificence of the often harsh Irish landscape.
And they show the transforming impact of modernity, as industry, railways
and urban expansion slowly brought Ireland into a new era. Covering the
first century of Ireland in the era of photography, this enthralling visual
history brings the past vividly to life.
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Ireland’s Painters: 1600 - 1940 by
Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin
This richly illustrated survey of the history of Irish
painting encompasses the entire span from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth
century. The book includes both well-known and virtually unknown artists,
Irish artists who worked abroad as well as in Ireland, and major foreign
artists who came to Ireland and worked there for long periods. Among the
more than 350 works reproduced in full colour are many paintings from
notable private collections which have not been exhibited to the public.
Drawing on the unique combined experience of leading Irish art authorities
Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, the book presents an exciting
roll call of important Irish painters, from the talented Garret Morphy
of the Restoration period to William Scott and Louis LeBrocquy of our
own time. Broad in its scope and perceptive in its scholarship, the book
is the most complete and beautifully illustrated history of Irish painters
available.
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Treasures of the National Museum
of Ireland: Irish Antiquities edited by Patrick Wallace and Raghnall O
Floinn
This magnificent book, lavishly illustrated with nearly
250 full-colour illustrations, is a comprehensive introduction to the
Irish Antiquities collections of the National Museum of Ireland. The Museum’s
collections include some of the most important Celtic and pre-Celtic artefacts
in the world. The book selects the highlights: over 200 artefacts are
illustrated, described and discussed, including such world-famous objects
as the Broigher Boat, the Ardagh Chalice, the Tara Brooch and the Cross
of Cong. Ranging in date from 4500BC to AD1500, the objects described
here include the Museum’s significant collections of Bronze Age fold,
Early Christian jewellery and altar vessels, culminating in church treasures
of the later Middle Ages. The illustrated objects are fully captioned
and are accompanied by explanatory essays covering each major period,
written by members of the Museum’s staff. This is the most comprehensive
and authoritative general work yet on the National Museum of Ireland’s
antiquities collection and should establish itself as the standard guide
for many years to come.
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The Big House in Ireland by Valerie
Pakenham
The Big House has haunted the Irish landscape and imagination
for nearly four hundred years. This book attempts to recreate the world
of the ‘Big House’ from the words of those who lived there - or stayed
there - quoting from letters, diaries, memoirs, household accounts and
travellers’ tales. The author has been able to draw on a huge reservoir
of private collections of family papers, many of them hitherto unpublished.
Part of the book is devoted to the private lives of those who lived there,
many of them as racy as the stock characters of Irish fiction: duels,
adultery, abduction, family feuds - and extravagant hospitality leading
to gout and insolvency. It also deals with their relations with their
retainers and with their servants. Another section of the book deals with
the relationship of the ‘Big House’ with the world outside its gates,
including its response to the horrors of the Great Famine, to the Land
War of the 1830s, and to the Troubles of the early 1920s which led to
the burning of over seventy country houses and the collapse of the Ascendancy
world. The last chapter deals with the survivors who chose to stay on
and the astonishing renaissance of the Irish country house in the twenty-first
century. This book is sumptuously illustrated throughout with contemporary
paintings, drawings, photographs and caricatures, as well as superb new
photographs by Thomas Pakenham.
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Ingenious Ireland By Mary Mulvihill
This book is a unique study of Ireland’s natural wonders,
clever inventions and historic industries. Richly illustrated, meticulously
researched and lucidly written, it brings the reader on a fascinating
county-by-county tour of Ireland with details of what to see and places
to visit. Find out why half of Ireland really belongs to North America
and why Connemara rain is so salty. Marvel at the natural wonders throughout
Ireland, among them the oldest fossil footprints in the northern hemisphere,
and the disappearing springs of Fore. Read about the advent of railways
and modern timekeeping. Discover why the shamrock is a sham, and the Dublin
Bay prawn is a fraud. Meet the ingenious Irish and wonder at the range
of their inventions: from Milk of Magnesia to the hypodermic syringe;
from the steam turbine to the ejector sear; from the modern tractor to
the first guided missile. The author’s knowledge is encyclopedic and her
enthusiasm for unravelling the mysteries and marvels of Ireland irresistible.
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An Leabhar Mor: The Great Book of
Gaelic edited by Malcolm Maclean and Theo Dorgan
This book brings together the work of more than 200 poets,
visual artists and calligraphers from Ireland and Scotland to create a
major contemporary artwork in the form of a visual anthology. The 100
Gaelic poems have been nominated by leading poets and writers such as
Seamus Heaney, Hamish Henderson and Alistair Macleod, as well as the contributing
poets themselves. The selection features work from almost every century
from the 6th to the 21st and includes the earliest Gaelic poetry in existence.
Comedy, tragedy, love, death, the spiritual and the bawdy are all represented
in poems by Sorley MacLean, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Iain Crichton Smith,
Michael Davitt, Kevin MacNeill and Cathal O Searcaigh. The 100 visual
artists - 50 from each country - were commissioned to respond to the poetry
in a variety of media. The artists include Alan Davie, Rita Duffy, Will
Maclean, Brian Maguire, Frances Walker, Anna Macleod, John Byrne, Shane
Cullen, Alasdair Gray, Noel Sheridan, Calum Colvin, and Alastair MacLennan.
A small team of calligraphers and typographer Don Addison worked in collaboration
with the artists to integrate the key lines of poetry and the artist’s
images. The resulting work is an extraordinary celebration in words and
pictures of Gaelic culture from the earliest times to the present day.
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The Glenstal Book of Icons: Praying
with the Glenstal Icons by Gregory Collins
This handsome book contains prayers and meditations on
a selection of icons from the Abbey’s Byzantine chapel. Drawing on the
popular monastic practice of ‘lectio divinia’, the icons themselves are
seen as ‘texts’ giving rise to meditation on the Christian mysteries.
This leads to acts of prayer, in which special emphasis is placed on the
famous ‘Jesus Prayer’, discussed in detail in the introduction to the
book. Thus the icons and the Jesus Prayer become a point of entry to the
mystical spirituality of Easter Christianity. The book’s aim is that of
the icon itself: to open the heart in contemplative prayer to the transforming
vision of God’s glory. Each icon is reproduced in full colour. This book
is a companion volume to last year’s Glenstal Book of Prayer, which was
a phenomenal bestseller and remains available, also in hardback
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The Irish Times Book of the Year
2002 edited by Peter Murtach
This book is a compendium of the most engaging, amusing
and informed writing in ‘The Irish Times’ newspaper.
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Shackleton: An Irishman in Antarctica
by Jonathan Shackleton and John MacKenna
Eight years after his death, the legend of Ernest Shackleton
and the extraordinary story of the ‘Endurance’ South Pole expedition still
hold a compelling grip on the public imagination. Trapped in drifting
polar ice pack, Ernest Shackleton and his crew fought for survival against
the odds. When the Endurance was finally crushed, they were stranded on
ice-floes for more than a year before reaching Elephant Island in April
1916. From there Shackleton and his five men embarked on the most remarkable
rescue mission in maritime history, sailing to South Georgia across eight
hundred miles of the world’s roughest seas in a small open boat. Despite
failing to realize his dream of reaching the South Pole, Shackleton’s
story lives on because of his unique qualities of leadership and the fact
that all his men survived. This compelling narrative reveals the profound
influence of Shackleton’s Irish and Quaker roots, offering a vivid portrait
of a man whose ambition was tempered by his flawed humanity and egalitarianism.
Here too are the untold stories of Shackleton’s upbringing in Kildare;
his time in the Merchant Navy; his 1901 voyage on the Discovery with Scott;
his 1907 Nimrod expedition; his marriage and love affairs; his life as
a public figure and politician; and the haunting story of his final, fatal
expedition on the Quest. Drawing on family records, diaries and letters
- and hitherto unpublished photographs and archive material - this mesmerizing
book takes the reader beyond the myth of Shackleton the man, for whom
‘Optimism is true moral courage,’ and whose greatest triumph was that
of life over death. The book is lavishly illustrated with over 100 photographs,
maps and engravings, many of them appearing in print for the first time.
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I Am Just Going Outside: Captain
Oates - Antarctic Tradegy by Michael Smith
On 17 March 1912, Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates crawled bootless
from a tent to his death in blizzard conditions on -10 Celcius. Oates,
always an outsider on Scott’s polar expedition, died on his thirty-second
birthday. His parting words were: ‘I am just going outside and may be
sometime.’ Oates was the epitome of the Victorian English gentleman, a
public schoolboy who became a dashing cavalry officer and hero in the
Boer War. Stationed in Ireland from 1902-06, his passion became horseracing
and he won numerous victories at racecourses throughout Ireland. In 1910
he paid 1,000 pounds to join Scott’s South Pole expedition. Oates was
dominated by his austere mother and constantly struggled with dyslexia.
He clashed with Scott on the expedition and his diary and letters offer
a very different perspective from the traditional myth of Scott’s heroic
failure. Even the motives behind Oates’ sacrifice can now be challenged
Oates’ mother blamed Scott for her son’s death and she was among the first
to challenge the accepted version of events. She continued to control
his memory long after his death, keeping his diary and letters hidden,
even ordering their destruction from her deathbed. Oates always had difficulty
forming lasting relationships with women. He died without knowing that
he was a father. The story of how Oates died, unaware of his daughter,
has been a closely guarded secret until now. This book is a compelling
and heart-rending story of endurance, bravery and folly. The author’s
previous book, An Unsung Hero - Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer, was a bestseller
in Ireland.
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Becoming George: The Life of Mrs.
W.B. Yeats by Ann Saddlemyer
’I, the poet William Yeats, 85 Restored this tower for
my wife George’ claims the lovely six-line poem in which Yeats dedicates
the renovation of Thoor Ballylee. But the poem’s truth conceals another,
and different truth - that they worked together at the restoration, and
it was largely her vision and hands that created a dwelling from the former
ruins. Just how symbolic this is, of the close but largely hidden collaborations
between them, is revealed by this deeply-researched life of George Yeats
- the first full scale-biography of a women of remarkable gifts and generous
self-concealment. Raised in the decades before the First War, in London
literary salons where the arts and occult met, Georgie Hyde-Lees became
an art student, accomplished linguist, and serious scholar of medieval
arcana, anthroposophy, and astrology. She was a lifelong friend of Ezra
Pound and his wife Dorothy Shakespear, in whose social circle Yeats also
moved; he sponsored her initiation to the Order of the Golden Dawn. In
1917 they married (she was 25, he was 52), and on their honeymoon Georgie
began the automatic writing which formed the substance of ‘A Vision’,
and from which sprang the ideas that occupied Yeats for the rest of his
life. Her extrasensory perceptions fed his poetic imagery as her practicality
and warmth supplied the environment for his writing. As with the restoration
of Ballylee, they were intimate collaborations - but her instinct was
always for self-effacement. Though valued by numerous writer friends as
a perceptive critic - and known to have written two plays and a novel,
which she suppressed - she deliberately hid her talents from public view.
Her choice was to appear as Yeats’s wife, helpmate, and secretary, the
mother of his children - and for over thirty years after his death the
tireless overseer of his literary legacy and a knowledgeable adviser to
generations of young critics and writers. For the first time this intelligent
and creative woman is allowed to take centre stage. Drawing on memoirs
and a wealth of unknown and unpublished sources, this biography reveals
someone much more significant than just ‘Mrs. W. B. Yeats’ - a personality
at once visionary and practical, and an important figure in twentieth-century
literary history.
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The Kick: A Memoir by Richard Murphy
In this memoir, the Irish poet, drawing on five decades
of private notebooks, has created a unique memoir of his life and times.
Written with the personality of a diary and full of self-disparaging wit,
his memoir takes the reader from a decayed Protestant ‘Big House’ in the
west of Ireland to the colonial island of Ceylon, where, in the 1930s,
his father was the last British Mayor of Colombo. Murphy writes about
delicate personal issues, including his own ambivalent sexuality, as he
chronicles the making and unmaking of a writer. He includes amusing and
moving accounts of his meetings and friendships with many prominent writers
and actors from the literary milieux of London, Dublin and New York, including
Harold Nicholson, J.R. Acherley, Patrick Kavanagh, W.H. Auden, Theodore
Roethke, Robert Lowell, Conor Cruise O’Brien, James Dickey, Kenneth Tynan,
Robert Shaw, Mary Ure, Peter O’Toole, John McGahern, Sylvia Plath and
Ted Hughes. The book evokes people and desolate places on the west coast
and islands of Ireland. With critical irony, enduring affection, and often
with sadness, Murphy describes his experience at boarding school and at
Oxford, where he studies under C.S. Lewis. Also included are disturbing
memories of discrimination against Irish ‘tinkers’ and of mass murder
in Sri Lanka, where he returned fifty years after leaving the island as
a child. In memorable prose, this book records a strangely eventful life.
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Oscar and Bosie: A Fatal Passion
by Trevor Fisher
The love story of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas
surely ranks among the world’s greatest romantic tragedies. After Wilde’s
tragic bid to sue the Marquis of Queensberry for libel ended in total
humiliation, with his imprisonment, exile and early death in Paris at
the age of 46, the London literati split into bitterly opposed camps.
Some have believed that Bosie deserted a friend in need, others that Wilde
was the innocent victim of a long-running family feud between an obsessed
father and his pampered son. Fuelled by the surviving correspondence,
successive biographies and Bosie’s own polemical writing, the arguments
have merely intensified over the years. Of Wilde, however, the question
will always remain: Why did he bring about his own downfall? This book
is that fascinating and complex story.
[ top ]
Brian Moore: A Biography by Patricia
Craig
’The only wise prediction to make about a new Brian Moore
novel is that it will be unpredictable and wise,’ wrote Christopher Ricks
reviewing ‘Black Robe’, one of the twenty magnificent novels which put
Brian Moore into the first rank of world writers. Northern Ireland may
have shaped him, as he grew up one of nine children in a Catholic doctor’s
Belfast household, but World War II took him to Africa and war-ravaged
Europe, and Canada freed him to become a writer. It was in London in 1955
that he first published ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’, the first
of many novels which led steadily to international critical acclaim. The
United States became his home, though he was no more likely to be pigeon-holed
by a single country than to write the same novel under a different guise.
He was a writer’s writer, baffling contemporaries who wondered how he
pulled off his literary feats while remaining accessible to everyone.
Above all, he could wield a marvellous plot, create characters - male,
and perhaps especially female - who would burst into life, and he could
kindle atmospheres of haunting tension, historical vividness or metaphysical
mystery. In this, the first authorised biography, Patricia Craig impeccably
pieces together the colourful and peripatetic life that lay behind the
novels. She also reveals the droll, romantic, cant-hating, affable and
brilliant man who so disarmingly enhanced twentieth-century letters.
[ top ]
Robert Emmet: A Life by Patrick M.
Geoghegan
Robert Emmet (1778-1803) was one of the most romantic
of all Irish revolutionaries. His doomed relationship with Sarah Curran,
his failed rebellion at the age of twenty-five, and the brilliance of
his speech from the dock, captured the popular imagination and created
a powerful and enduring legend. W.B. Yeats declared that Emmet was the
leading saint of Irish nationalism. Born in Dublin, Emmet was the youngest
son of the state physician. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, he was
a leading member of the College Historical Society until his expulsion
for radical activity in 1798. Prevented from pursuing a profession, Emmet
visited the continent where he discussed plans for liberating Ireland
with Napoleon and Talleyrand. He returned to Ireland in 1802 and soon
became involved in a conspiracy for a new rebellion. This book reveals
for the first time the complex and ingenious plans that Emmet devised
for the rebellion. His youthful idealism and military talent proved insufficient,
however, and his attempt to seize Dublin on 23 July 1803 was a dramatic
failure. Captured soon after, Emmet won an unlikely victory with his extraordinary
speech from the dock that is rightly considered to be one of the greatest
courtroom orations in history. He died bravely on the scaffold the next
day. This book draws on new archival material from Ireland, the United
Kingdom, France and the United States, and is the first modern study of
Robert Emmet in almost fifty years. Romantic, impulsive and doomed, Emmet
is one of the tragic heroes of Ireland’s past.
[ top ]
James Larkin by Emmet O’Connor
James Larkin (1874-1947) retains a central position in
the pantheon of the Irish labour movement. In the popular consciousness
he is most commonly linked to his role in the epic 1913 Dublin Lockout
and to his turbulent leadership of the Irish Transport and General Workers’
Union. Less well known is his role as leader of the Workers’ Union of
Ireland, his thorny relations with Soviet Russia, and his political career
as a city councillor and Dail deputy. In general, labour historians have
been kind to Larkin, and his style of leadership, which was often abrasive
and dictatorial, has often been portrayed as a form of improvisation engendered
by contemporary exigencies. In this important new biography, the author,
a leading labour historian, radically reassesses the man and asks whether
he should be viewed as a ‘hero’ of the working class, or as a ‘wrecker’
whose difficult personality was detrimental to both trade unionism and
an emerging Irish communist movement. The author uses new archival sources,
including declassified Soviet Union and FBI files, to cast new light on
Larkin and his relations with international communism. He aims to uncover
the motivation behind Larkin’s public persona, and to assess the reality
obscured by the myth.
[ top ]
The Billy Boy: The Life and Death
of LVF Leader Billy Wright by Chris Anderson
Since his death in 1997, Billy ‘King rat’ Wright has
become a cult figure for many loyalists, his image appearing on numerous
wall murals throughout Northern Ireland’s loyalist communities. Revered
and respected by loyalists, despised and feared by nationalists, Wright
is reputed to have been involved in a number of sectarian murders before
he himself was shot dead by republican gunmen inside the Maze Prison in
1997. Wright became involved with loyalist paramilitaries at the age of
16 when he joined the UVF’s junior wing. In the early 1990s he emerged
as the UVF Commander in the Mid-Ulster area and, through a deliberate
policy of ‘taking the war to the enemy’, effectively neutered the IRA
East Tyrone and North Armagh units. This book documents Wright’s role
in the Drumcree dispute of 1995-6 and his split from the UVF, recounting
how he ignored both a death threat and an order to leave Northern Ireland
within 72 hours, only to remain in Portadown and form the Loyalist Volunteer
Force. It covers Wright’s trial and subsequent imprisonment for a crime
it has been claimed was set up by the state, recounts the circumstances
of his killing inside a top security prison, and investigates the allegations
of state collusion in Wright’s death.
[ top ]
Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA by
Brendan Anderson
Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man
all his life. ‘I was born in a united Ireland,’ he says. ‘I want to die
in a united Ireland.’ This ambition has motivated his entire life. It
has been a life of imprisonment, of hunger strikes, of being on the run,
in safe houses, in action, and latterly in talks and negotiations. IRA
activists rarely, if ever, speak about their lives or their organization;
but in this book Cahill gives his full and frank story, his viewpoint,
his experiences - from Northern Irish prison cells of the 1940s when the
birch and cat-o-nine-tails were still in use, to the corridors of power
in Washington DC when the Good Friday Agreement was being negotiated.
Sentenced to death in 1942, he describes how he prepared to meet his fate;
though reprieved, he remembers vividly the awful day when his cellmate
and close friend was executed. He tells of the visit he made to Colonel
Gaddafi to smuggle arms and ammunition, and the fateful voyage of the
Claudia; Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin;
the high-drama helicopter escape of IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Jail.
He reveals how he rose through the ranks of the IRA and the circumstances
of his deportation from the United States. This is the story of an extraordinary
journey, Cahill’s own life mirroring the growth, changes and development
of the republican movement as a whole through more than sixty years of
intense involvement.
[ top ]
Rory & Ita by Roddy Doyle
This book is Roddy Doyle’s first non-fiction book. It
tells - largely in their own words - the story of his parents’ lives from
their first memories to the present. Born in 1923 and 1925 respectively,
they met at a New Year’s Eve dance in 1947 and married in 1951. They remember
every detail of their Dublin childhoods - the people (aunts, cousins,
shopkeepers, friends, teachers), the politics (both came from Republican
families), idyllic times in the Wexford countrrside for Ita, Rory’s apprenticeship
as a printer. Ita’s mother died when she was three; Rory was the oldest
of nine children, five of them girls. By the time they put down a deposit
of two hundred pounds for a house in Kilbarrack, Rory was working as a
compositor at the Irish Independent. By the time of the first of their
four children was born, he had become a teacher at the School of Printing
in Dublin. Kilbarrack and Dublin and Ireland began to change. Through
their eyes the reader sees the intensely Catholic society of their youth
being transformed into the vibrant, modern Ireland of today. Both Rory
and Ita Doyle are mavellous talkers, with excellent memories, so combined
with Roddy’s legendary skill in illuminating ordinary experience, it makes
for a book of tremendous warmth and humanity.
[ top ]
Evelyn: A True Story by Evelyn Doyle
Ireland 1953. Desmond Doyle, a painter and decorator,
is married with six children and living in the infamous Fatima Mansions
in Dublin. When his wife deserts him, Desmond’s world falls apart and
he is advised to put his children in the care of State industrial schools
as a temporary measure while he goes to England to find work. Upon his
return, he discovers, to his horror, that his children have been consigned
to State care until they reach the age of sixteen. Over the next year,
Desmond and his solicitors wage a groundbreaking and highly publicised
court battle against the Irish legal system to overturn the Children Act
of 1941 and bring the children home. Told through the eyes of Evelyn,
Desmond’s nine-year-old daughter, this book is the heartrending true story
of one man’s battle to change the law and reunite the family he loves.
[ top ]
The Boys: A Biography of Micheal
MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards by Christopher Fitz-Simon
Originally published in 1994, this classic double biography
of Micheal MacLiammoir and his life-long lover Hilton Edwards, tells the
story of two men, initially unhappy in their own lives and origins, who
fell passionately in love with each other, with Ireland, and with Orson
Welles, and gave Ireland the Gate Theatre, one of her truly great theatre
companies. The book is also an important story about the making of modern
Ireland.
[ top ]
Liam Clancy: Memories of an Irish
Troubadour by Liam Clancy
On St. Patrick’s Night, 1961, Liam Clancy along with
his brothers, Paddy and Tom, and their great friend, Tommy, four fiery
and passionate young folk singers from rural Ireland, made their debut
appearance on America’s most influential television programme, the ‘Ed
Sullivan Show’, and entranced the fifty million viewers coast to coast.
This sensational overnight success led to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy
Makem becoming a major part of musical history. They have justly been
called ‘the Beatles of Irish Music’ and have sold millions of records
over the last forty years. His autobiography is by turns uproarious and
wistful, charming and irreverent. His life was a party filled with music,
sex and more than a few pints of Guinness. His nightly encounters with
other soon to be famous young writers, actors and musicians on the Greenwich
Village scene - among them Bob Dylan, Robert Redford, Walter Matthau,
Lenny Bruce, Maya Angelou, Peter Seeger, Barbara Streisand - are remembered
here with unabashed honesty.
[ top ]
Racism and Social Change in the Republic
of Ireland by Bryan Fanning
This book provides an original and challenging account
of racism and Irish society. In the last decade Irish society has visibly
changed. New immigrant communities of black and ethnic minorities have
emerged. This book argues that Ireland was never immune from racist ideologies
that governed relationships between the ‘west and the rest’ despite a
history of colonial anti-Irish racism. Drawing upon a number of academic
disciplines, it focuses on the relationship between ideological forms
of racism and its consequences upon black and ethnic minorities, and sets
out an invaluable critique of racism in Irish society. Chapters on nation-building,
Ireland’s response to the Holocaust, refugees and asylum seekers, the
politics of Traveller exclusion and multiculturalism in Ireland examine
the mechanics of exclusion resulting from institutional racism within
political and administrative processes. The author locates Irish responses
to asylum seekers, immigrant minority communities and Travelling people
within a history of indigenous Irish racism.
[ top ]
Untold Stories: Protestants in the
Republic of Ireland, 1922-2002 edited by Colin Murphy and Lynne Adair
Protestants in the Republic of Ireland have remained
a silent minority since Independence, their history and experiences largely
ignored at the expense of both their Roman Catholic compatriots and their
fellow Protestants in the North. This collection of 54 personal essays
allows them finally to speak for themselves. The book demonstrates that
there is a great diversity of voices to be found amongst the Protestant
community. The stereotype of a privileged, aloof class, loyal to England,
is shown to be largely a myth. Most of the contributors are fiercely proud
of their Irish heritage, while remaining critical of many aspects of the
country’s development over the last eight years. Most contributors also
regret the separateness that has formed their identity. There is a great
sense of hurt at the still commonly held view that Protestants are ‘not
really Irish’. However, the book shows a remarkably positive outlook amongst
the minority community. The contributors are drawn from all arenas of
Irish life - the clergy, politics, business, the arts, journalism and
education - and include such well known people as Archbishop John Neill,
David Norris, Martin Manseragh, Edna Longley, Risteard O Glaisne, Bruce
Arnold, Carol Coulter and Donald Caird among others. The book demonstrates
that this small but significant minority has much to contribute to an
increasingly diverse Irish society.
[ top ]
Ride On In Song and Story by Jimmy
McCarthy
In 1984, Christy Moore recorded Jimmy McCarthy’s song
‘Ride On’ and its compelling rhythm and lyrics catapulted the singer/songwriter
into the national consciousness. Since then, his place in the forefront
of Irish popular music has been assured by a string of singularly individual
songs, among them ‘No Frontiers’, ‘Missing You’, ‘The Bright Blue Rose’,
and ‘As I Leave Behind Neidin’. Some of these songs have been recorded
by McCarthy himself and some by such legendary Irish singers as Mary Black
and Maura O’Connell. This book gathers together over fifty of McCarthy’s
most significant lyrics and gives the reader a unique insight into the
life events that inspired the songs. In his own inimitable voice, this
singer/songwriter traces his journey from squatting and busking in London
to singing in the National Concert Hall, major record deals and programmes
devoted to him on television. The book has a cast of fascinating characters
from the world of horses (Jimmy’s other passion) as well as from the world
of music.
[ top ]
Niall Quinn: The Autobiography by
Niall Quinn
Niall Quinn began his footballing life in a different
time and a different place - an era of low wages, big strikers and terraced
crowds. In nineteen years, he has seen the game grow and change almost
beyond recognition. He was on his way to becoming a legend in his favorite
sport of hurling when Arsenal came and took him away from Dublin to London.
Against the odds, he made it and retained something of himself along the
way. He has experienced both the ups, including two World Cups, and the
downs - two career-threatening cruciate ligament injuries and near-fatal
septicaemia. His happy-go-lucky approach to life disguises an iron resolve
that kept his career alive through injury, criticism and setbacks. After
a long learning curve which featured hard drinking and disastrous gambling,
he settled into a club and into a life which suited him when he moved
to Sunderland AFC. He has remained there during the most radical transformation
in the club’s fortunes, the changes in his own career mirroring those
at the Stadium of Light. In his autobiography he looks at what went on
behind the scenes during Ireland’s tumultuous 2002 World Cup campaign
and talks about his own efforts at kickstarting a reconciliation when
Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy went to war. As the man in the middle his
account offers an extraordinary perspective on events in Saipan and beyond.
In this book, Quinn opens the doors to the inner life of a footballer
- the failings, the temptations, the adventures and the good times.
[ top ]
In So Many Words: The Best of Con
Houlihan
Kerryman Con Houlihan, who in his time has been a fisherman,
a turf cutter and a rugby player, is now best known as one of Ireland’s
finest sports journalists. This book gathers together some outstanding
examples of his work over the years. Although, as would be expected, he
writes knowledgeably on a range of sports, from Gaelic football and hurling
to boxing and cricket. Con is also well known as a cultural commentator,
and here he gives his impressions of famous authors and artists as well
as his views on various feats in the sporting arena over the years. This
collection is a treasure trove of insights into all aspects of human life.
It is a book of wit and wisdom to dip into and enjoy.
[ top ]
For the Record: A History of the
National Football and Hurling League Finals by Tom Morrison
In 1926 Cork hurlers and Laois footballers won the first
ever national league finals. Since then there have been some classic contests
in the competition and all 32 counties plus New York have played in either
a league semi-final or final. Many memorable finals featured outstanding
performances and heart-stopping moments that gave enormous pleasure to
a multitude of followers over the years. In this unique history of 76
years of national league finals, the author describes over 180 games.
Thorough research, interviews with major stars of the past and present,
match programmes and newspaper accounts have been used to compile accurate
match reports plus fascinating detail on players and team line-outs. Accompanied,
where possible, by team photographs, many rarely seen or published, the
over result is a stirring story of the drama and tensions in these games
involving over 4500 players and referees. The book is a worthy salute
to all the teams, to the great players who graced these games and to their
followers who travelled in their thousands.
[ top ]
Nealon’s Guide to the 29th Dail and
Seanad edited by Geraldine Kennedy
This is the latest edition of Ireland’s outstanding political
work of reference. For the last quarter of a century, Nealon’s Guide has
appeared after every general election. It has provided a comprehensive
profile of each Dail and Seanad, laid out in a style that is at once visually
attractive and easy to follow. Ted Nealon has now retired from public
life, but his Guide goes on. This new edition draws on the unrivalled
editorial resources of The Irish Times, which has taken over the compilation
of the Guide from him. This edition of the Guide is the first to appear
in full colour. At the heart of the book are the election results. The
complete count from every constituency is given, showing not only the
first preferences but also the subsequent distribution of surplusses and
the votes of eliminated candidates right down to the filling of the last
seat. There are profiles of every TD and Senator, a full listing of all
cabinet and ministerial appointments, and statistical and political analysis.
[ top ]
That They May Face the Rising Sun
by John McGahern
’The morning was clear. There was no wind on the lake.
There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the
strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire world to themselves.’
‘The doors of the house were open. Jamesie entered without knocking and
came in noiselessly until he stood in the doorway of a large room where
the Ruttledges were sitting. He stood as if waiting under trees for returning
wildfowl. He expected his discovery to be quick. There would a cry of
surprise and reproach; he would counter by accusing them of not being
watchful enough. There would be welcome and laughter. When the Ruttledges
continued to converse calmly about a visit they were expecting that same
afternoon, he could contain himself no longer. Such was his continual
expectation of discovery that in his eavesdropping he was nearly always
disappointed by the innocence he came upon.’ From the very opening pages,
the reader sees many memorable Irish characters as they move about Joe
and Kate Ruttledge, who have come to Ireland from London in search of
a different life. There is John Quinn, who will stop at nothing to ensure
a flow of women; Johnny, who left for England twenty years before in pursuit
of love; and Jimmy Joe McKiernan, head of the IRA, both auctioneer and
undertaker. The gentle Jamsie and his wife Mary embody the spirit of the
place. They have never left the lake but know everything that ever stirred
or moved there. In passages of beauty and truth, the drama of a year in
the lives of these and many other characters unfolds through the action,
the rituals of work, religious observances and play. By the novel’s close,
the reader will feel that he/she has been introduced, with deceptive simplicity,
to a complete representation of existence - an enclosed world has been
transformed into an Everywhere.
[ top ]
The Celts: A History by Raithi O
Hogain
The Celts were one of the most important population groups
ever to spread across the ancient European continent. From 800BC to 1050AD,
the story of the Celts is one of expanding power and influence followed
by contraction and near extinction. Drawing on all possible sources of
evidence, from the material archaeological remains of ancient Greece and
Rome to the surviving native Celtic cultural influences, the author outlines
the history of the people known as the Celts. The reader follows the evolution
of this culture as it gains strength, from its earliest origins in central
Europe, through tumult and destruction, to its ‘twilight’ and dwindling
survival in the far west. Yet, while this once important culture managed
to survive in some areas only, the influence of the Celts is far more
widespread. It remains a vital component of European history and heritage
from east to west.
[ top ]
Recoveries: Neglected Episodes in
Irish Cultural History 1860-1912 by John Wilson Foster
In three fascinating contributions to the little-researched
subject of the history of science in Ireland, the author looks at neglected
episodes in Irish cultural history from mid-Victorian to Edwardian times.
He discusses Darwinism in late nineteenth-century Ireland and its impact
on Irish churchmen, with special reference to Darwin’s champion John Tyndall,
who famous declaration of materialism in his Presidential Address to the
British Association for the Advancement of Science in Belfast, 1874 provoked
a vehement response from the leaders of the Protestant as well as Catholic
churches. He then moves to the Belfast of 1911 and the building and launching
of the ‘Titanic’, which he sees as the culmination of the engineering
genius of Belfast from the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century.
In his third essay, he looks at the growing interest in Belfast towards
the end of the nineteenth century in amateur scientific fieldwork (for
example, botany) encouraged by the values and preoccupations of Victorian
culture.
[ top ]
To the Leaders of Our Working People
by Standish James O’Grady
This book contains the author’s important but little-known
pieces from ‘The Irish Worker’, written in 1912-13. Although O’Grady has
usually been regarded as a Protestant unionist, he was always a maverick
and, later in life, shared the columns of ‘The Irish Worker’ with socialists
such as Jim Larkin, James Connolly and Sean O’Casey. He makes militant
statements against capitalism and uses military vocabulary to advocate
a commune system. He would not have supported armed insurrection, yet
his rhetoric is a stirring call for action. This book is part of the Classics
of Irish History series.
[ top ]
Victory and Woe: The West Limerick
Brigade in the War of Independence by Mossie Hartnett
This book is a fascinating account of life at the grassroots
during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War by the Officer Commanding,
2nd Battalion, West Limerick Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. Mossie Hartnett
(1893-1977), who fought on the Anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, describes
his early life on a farm in Tournafulia in the southwest corner of Limerick,
his enrolment in the Irish Volunteers in 1915, and his involvement in
the conflict until his release from a Free State prison in 1923. In an
appendix, the British troops’ little-known and short-lived practice of
taking hostages in order to protect themselves is vividly described by
Mossie’s cousin, Dr. Edward Hartnett, who was taken hostage in the Spring
of 1921. This book is part of the Classics of Irish History series
[ top ]
.
Free State or Republic?: Pen Pictures
of the Historic Treaty Session of Dail Eireann by Padraig de Burca and
John F. Boyle
This book contains eye-witness accounts by two reporters
from the ‘Irish Independent’ newspaper of the historic Treaty debates
of Dail Eireann, held in University College Dublin’s Earlsfort Terrace
building in December 1921 and January 1922. Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins,
Arthur Griffith, and a host of other participants come to life in these
pages. The colourful descriptions of the scene and of the reactions to
speeches, written while the debates were in progress, are far more revealing
than the published records of the debates. This book was originally published
in 1922, and this reprint is part of the Classics of Irish History series.
[ top ]
Ireland Since 1939 by Henry Patterson
This book traces the historical development in Ireland
north and south of the border since the outbreak of World War II. It explores
the dramatic events of the past 60 years, from the signing of the 1938
Anglo-Irish Agreement by de Valera and Chamberlain to the current peace
talks. Ireland’s ongoing struggle to reconcile its internal disagreements
is documents through the decades - from the growth of the Orange Order,
the formation of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party in the early
1970s, the reverberations of the Haughey government in the 1980s, and
the atrocities committed by the paramilitary organizations. As well as
tracing the extraordinary economic growth and expansion, the author places
political development within an international context, citing the toppling
of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the end of apartheid
as events that inspired a more pragmatic approach to the Irish troubles
- spurred on by such key players as John Hume and David Trimble (joint
recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize), Gerry Adams and Mo Mowlam, to bring
about peace on the island of Ireland.
[ top ]
The Murder of Conell Boyle, County
Donegal, 1898 by Frank Sweeney
On 30 August, 1898, a sixty-year-old widower, living
alone, was murdered in his own single-roomed home in a quiet townland
in northwest Donegal. This brutal event sent shock waves through the local
community because there was no apparent reason for his death. He had no
contentious involvement with his landlord, nor did he have any interest
in religious, agrarian or political agitation either locally or nationally.
He was a man of little money, living on a few acres of broken mountainland
in a scattered townland best described in 1898 as a peasant society. This
study sets out to examine that murder and its aftermath in the context
of a changing society in north-west Donegal at that time when the long
established and well-embedded, centuries-old, local Gaelic culture was
being overtaken by the rapid intrusion of the expanding institutions of
the state. The murder provides a suitable vehicle to examine the attitudes
of a small remote community to this ever-changing world and their resilient
efforts to deal with events according to their own standards rather than
bow to the external powers of the intrusive state institutions.
[ top ]
Fr. Michael Dungan’s Blanchardstown,
1836-1868 by Elizabeth Cronin
In 1826, seven hundred parishioners from the Catholic
parish of Blanchardstown sent a petition to Archbishop Murray requesting
that he institute an inquiry among the laity, who complained of ‘a system
of neglect unexampled in any other parish in the diocese’. This neglect,
according to the parishioners arose from the many changes of curates and
from ‘the unfortunate circumstances of the Rev. Gentleman over them having
devoted himself to concerns by which he became a stranger in his own parish
and lost the respect which is necessary between pastor and flock’. It
is against this background that thirty-seven-year-old Fr. Michael Dungan
took up his appointment as parish pries of St. Brigid’s, Blanchardstown,
on 29 October 1836. He was the first Maynooth parish priest to serve there.
This study attempts to reconstruct the parish as it was in the period
of that pastorate, 1836-1868. This period was a formative time in the
life of the Irish Church. The changes and developments that took place
in this parish may be seen as a microcosm of what was happening in the
archdiocese of Dublin and in the country as a whole. The study profiles
a parish priest who accomplished great changes, because he was not only
an energetic highly organized administrator, but also a great facilitator.
[ top ]
The Story of the Irish Pub by Cian
Molloy
One of the most honoured ranks in Ancient Celtic society
was that of ‘briugu’, or ‘hospitaller’, who was only worthy of the status
if he had ‘a never-dry cauldron, a dwelling on a public road and a welcome
to every face.’ According to the medieval historians, a brewer and a hospitalier
were among the very first people to set foot on the soil of Ireland following
the Great Flood of the Bible. The Pub occupies a very special place in
Irish social history, yet surprisingly little has been written about it.
This book tells the story of licensed premises in Ireland from ancient
times to the present day in an informative and highly entertaining way.
The author describes all the major developments in the history of the
pub and unearths many amusing facts and figures about the licensed trade
in the context of Irish history in general. Following the history of the
licensed trade are profiles of over 100 pubs that have been owned by the
same family for over 100 years. A photograph and brief description of
each pub is included, as well as stories from their often glorious pasts.
These pubs are scattered all across Ireland and a map is included to help
readers locate them. This book will be of keen interest to social historians,
visitors looking for the ‘real’ pub experience, and anyone who has that
special affection for the pub and the role it has played in Irish society
over the years.
[ top ]
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