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Read Ireland Book Reviews, August 2003
None Shall Divide Us by
Michael Stone
Michael Stone, deadly killing machine
and freelance gunman, knew no loyalty but to Ulster and the gun. His 1998
attack on a Republican funeral, which left three men dead, and his audacious
bid to execute Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, earned him notoriety
and a place at the centre of Loyalist politics. When justice finally caught
up with him he was sentenced to more than 800 years in prison - he served
only 12. Released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in July
2000, he publicly renounced terrorism apologized for the suffering he
had caused, and threw his weight behind the peace process. He now lives
under a double threat of assassination: from Republicans and from extreme
Loyalists who accuse him of selling out to the peace process. Here is
his story told for the first time in his own words.
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The Lordship of Ireland
in the Middle Ages by James Lydon
This book on Ireland in the Middle Ages
is a coherent and comprehensive study of an important and fascinating
period in the development of Ireland as we know it today. The medieval
lordship of Ireland was invested in the English crown by the papacy in
the mid-twelfth century. That remained the constitutional position until
1541 when Henry VIII became King of Ireland. But by then the political
reality was very different. Ireland was fragmented, with a government
in Dublin exercising limited power and the island mostly dominated by
Anglo-Irish and Irish families who controlled the everyday life of most
of the inhabitants. The opening chapters provide essential background
information on the causes of the English invasion and the founding on
Anglo-Ireland. The central section of the book covers the thirteenth century
- the high point in the history of the lordship. The increased prosperity
and the stability resulting from the new English settlement made Ireland
a valuable asset to England. But the strain imposed on the English exchequer
by the king’s involvement in making war, the excessive demands he made
on the lordship for military and financial support, and the otherwise
neglect of Ireland gradually resulted in a process of decline from which
the lordship never recovered. Relative peace gave way to war and lawlessness.
An endless struggle for power in the localities followed. The Anglo-Irish
increasingly asserted their identification with Ireland as a ‘middle-nation’.
The Irish, through the so-called ‘Gaelic revival’, reasserted their own
culture and in most areas their political independence. This all led to
the effective collapse of the lordship as a political reality. The final
section of the book examines this collapse, and summarizes the contribution
made by the Middle Ages to the shaping of modern Ireland.
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Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers:
the 16th (Irish) Division in the Great War by Terence Denman
The Great War of 1914-18 saw the Irish
soldier make his greatest sacrifice on Britain’s behalf. Nearly 135,000
Irishmen volunteered (conscription was never applied in Ireland) in addition
to the 50,000 Irish who were serving with the regular army and the reserves
on 4 August 1914. Within a few weeks of the outbreak of war, no less than
three Irish divisions - the 10th (Irish), 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster)
- were formed from Irishmen, Catholic and Protestant, who responded to
Lord Kitchener’s call to arms. An estimated 35,000 Irish-born soldiers
were killed before the armistice came in November 1918. Over 4,000 of
those died with the 16th (Irish) Division. This book is that story. Originally
published in 1992 and quickly sold out, the book has recently been reprinted.
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The End of Irish History?:
Critical Reflections on the Celtic Tiger edited by Colin Coulter and Steve
Coleman
In this book, academics from a range of
different disciplines seek to offer a more critical understanding of the
nature of contemporary Irish society. A number of contributors take issue
with the widespread assumption that the advent of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ has
been to the advantage of all. It is argued that while the economic boom
has served the interests of the wealthy, it has conferred little benefit
upon the more marginalised sections of southern Irish society. Other chapters
in the text set out to counter the orthodox opinion that the last decade
has been one of cultural advance within the Irish Republic. An alternative
reading is advanced that suggests that the processes of social change
associated with the ‘Celtic Tiger’ have in fact accelerated the cultural
dislocation of southern Irish society. This book is a timely and radical
attempt to characterise and evaluate a society in the throes of radical
change.
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Ten Years After: The Irish
Film Board 1993-2003 by Kevin Rockett
Since its re-establishment in 1993, the
Irish Film Board has been at the forefront of all aspects of Irish film,
including script development, training, marketing and investing in one
hundred feature films and television series, and nearly three hundred
short dramas, documentaries and animation films. This book documents and
celebrates the Film Board supported films made during the decade 1993-2003.
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The Aran Islands: A World
of Stone by Mairead Ashe FitzGerald
Lying in the Atlantic Ocean off Galway
Bay, the Aran Islands are a place apart. Here island life has preserved
many aspects of Irish culture - its language, customs and traditions.
These islands bear witness to events from earliest times and have experienced
Celtic occupation, the arrival of Christianity, invasions, sieges, famine
and evictions. This history is evident in the massive Iron Age forts,
the Early Christian ruins, and in the literature, songs and images from
these three ‘stepping stones out of Europe’. This book is a comprehensive,
beautifully illustrated introduction to and lasting memento of these unique
islands.
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Paradiso Seasons by Denis
Cotter
Cooking in CafE9 Paradiso, the internationally
renowned restaurant in Cork City, Denis Cotter has gained a reputation
for innovation in his approach to food and for the quality and personal
style of his menus. This book represents a journey through the eternally
shifting seasons, focussing on the chef’s favourite vegetables, at their
prime moment and, from them, creating sumptuous and thoughtful recipes.
Featuring over 140 original recipes, prefaced by witty and informative
introductions, this book offers a practical and inspirational approach
to cooking and eating seasonal food. It also includes a unique section
showcasing new and exciting approaches to outdoor cooking.
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John Charles McQuaid: Ruler
of Catholic Ireland by John Cooney
This is the first major study of the life
and times of John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin, who for more
than three decades, from 1940 to 1972, dominated political and social
and religious developments in Ireland. While Archbishop McQuaid ranks
as one of the great social reformers of independent Ireland, he was also
a ‘control freak’. A superb administrator, and an admirer of J. Edgar
Hoover’s FBI, he imposed his iron will on Irish politics and society by
instilling fear among his clergy and people. Resolutely opposed to Communism
and liberals, McQuaid’s ‘vigilance committee’ kept files on politicians
and priests, workers and students, doctors and lawyers, nuns and nurses,
housewives and trade unionists, writers and filmmakers. There was no room
for dissent. His ambition was directed towards the building up of a truly
Catholic State - he attempted to exclude Protestants, Jews, liberal Catholics
and feminists. This book tells the inside story of how McQuaid crushed
the attempts of the reformist Minister for Health, Dr. Noel Browne, to
introduce a free welfare system for mothers and children. It also shows
how McQuaid exercised enormous power over all aspects of government: education,
hospitals, the adoption services, penal institutions and criminal justice
system. For Protestants in Northern Ireland, he embodied their fears of
‘Rome Rule’. This book for the first time looks at the career of this
giant in Irish life, who also wielded enormous influence in defining Ireland’s
relations with the Vatican and the Irish Catholic diaspora worldwide.
In this exceptional study, McQuaid comes to life as an extraordinary man,
able to seize every opportunity to forward his ideals and those of his
Church.
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A Living Island: Ireland’s
Responsibility to Nature by Michael Viney
This small book is the first in an occasional
series on issues related to sustainable development in Ireland.
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Irish Trees: Myths, Legends
& Folklore by Niall MacCoitir
Ancient Ireland was once heavily wooded
and a squirrel could travel from Cork to Killarney without touching the
ground. So it is no surprise that the mythology and folklore of trees
were part of everyday life. A sprig of mountain ash tied to the tails
of livestock kept the fairies from harming them. A staff of blackthorn
was the best to have when out walking at night to ward off evil spirits.
This book, beautifully illustrated in specially-commissioned watercolours
by Grania Langrishe, brings together the myths, legends and folklore associated
with the native Irish trees. There are two main themes: the tree as a
marker of important places, such as the royal site or holy well, and the
role of different trees as sources of magical power in folk customs and
traditions. Many ‘powers’ were common to different trees in spheres as
diverse as fertility, magic, and the tree as a link between this world
and the spiritual.
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An Unconsidered People:
The Irish in London by Catherine Dunne
Half a million Irish men and women left
Ireland in the 1950s, forced by decades of economic stagnation to make
their lives elsewhere. For many of these emigrants, mostly young and unskilled,
Britain was their only hope of survival. Abandoned by the Irish state,
this forgotten generation went in search of employment and security, the
dignity of a future that was denied to them at home. For many of these
youthful emigrants, exile held the promise of adventure and excitement,
freedom from the oppression of de Valera’s Ireland. Yet no two emigrant
experiences were the same. Here, in a series of compelling interviews
- honest, angry, funny - these vibrant voices reflect the diversity of
lives lived away from the homeland, an unconsidered people’s struggle
to plant new lives in alien soil. Indeed trees has such an influence the
creators of the Ogham alphabet named each letter after a tree based on
the seasonal cycle of trees, and the link between each letter and its
tree is described here. Finally, the author presents an Ogham calendar
with each month named after the tree most closely associated with it.
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Home Rule: An Irish History
1800-2000 by Alvin Jackson
Decimated by famine and emigration and
divided by British rule, the people of Ireland sought unity in Home Rule.
Home Rule bound together the varieties of Irish nationalism. It has united
British and Irish politicians in the quest for an agreed settlement in
Ireland: it has linked Ulster Unionists and Irish Nationalists. The story
of Home Rule is central to the political experience of both modern Ireland
and Britain. In this book, the author examines the development of Home
Rule and devolution in Ireland from the nineteenth century to the present.
It traces some of the main themes in Irish peace-making from their late
Victorian roots to the beginnings of the millennium: it explores the origins
of the Good Friday Agreement, and many of the interconnections between
Irish political history and contemporary affairs. The book offers an incisive
reappraisal of different political leaders through the period. Drawing
on new archival material, the book illuminates a crucial aspect of Irish
and British history over a two-hundred-year span.
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Shackleton: The Polar Journeys
by Ernest Shackleton
This book combines Heart of the Antarctic
and South, Ernest Shackleton’s personal accounts of his polar expeditions.
Heart of the Antarctic is the story of his polar expedition of 1907-1909,
part of his never-ending quest to reach the South Pole. On this, his first
expedition in sole charge, he came agonisingly close to achieving his
dream. Appalling weather conditions, however, together with the necessity
of reaching his shop before it had to flee the advancing pack-ice, forced
him to abandon his goal in a breathtaking race against time. With photographs
taken on the expedition by Douglas Mawson, and numerous maps and diagrams,
this is a fascinating record of all time. The is the only complete edition
available. South is Shackleton’s account of a journey that began in August
1914 with high hopes of a first exploration and ended two years later
in a desperate struggle for survival, after the expedition’s ship, the
Endurance, was first trapped in sea-ice, then crushed. Shackleton, with
a handful of his party, braved the fury of the South Atlantic as they
made their desperate 800-mile journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia
aboard the James Caird. This small boat - just over 20 feet long - was
pitted against the fury of the southern ocean. The survival of the entire
expedition was hinged on this last gamble. Sir Ernest Shackleton was one
of the greatest and most colourful explorers of his time. Born in County
Kildare in 1874, he was educated in London and apprenticed in the Merchant
Navy before becoming a junior officer under Captain Robert Scott, on Discovery,
between 1901 and 1904. From this point on, his life was devoted to polar
exploration, and raising funds for his projects. He died in South Georgia
in 1922 while on his fourth Antarctic expedition.
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Behaving Badly: The Life
of Richard Harris 1930-2002 by Cliff Goodwin
Richard Harris was never an easy person
to get along with. He was a difficult schoolboy (and was later disowned
by his Limerick teachers), and then he went to work in the family flour
and milling business - where he organized a strike against his father.
His teenage dreams of becoming a professional rugby player were shattered
when he contracted tuberculosis. In 1953 he arrived in London to train
as an actor with just 21 pounds in his pocket and his father’s words ringing
in his ears: ‘Go. For God’s Sake, go.’ It was as a gifted and compelling
actor that Richard Harris dominated stage and screen for more than four
decades. He was nominated for an Oscar twice: for his earthy portrayal
of a rugby player in ‘This Sporting Life’ and as a dominant and bullish
Irish farmer in ‘The Field’. More recently he delivered gripping screen
performances in ‘Gladiator’ and two ‘Harry Potter’ films. But it was his
violent, drunken, womanising private life that fed the public myth and
made Harris, one of the new breed of rogue male actors, an international
celebrity. Married and divorced twice, with three sons - two actors, one
a film director - he claimed the only time he had been miscast was as
a husband. His lovers included legends such as Merle Oberon, Sophia Loren,
Ava Gardner and Vanessa Redgrave. This book tells the whole story.
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Almost There: The Onward
Journey of a Dublin Woman - a Memoir by Nuala O’Faolain
In 1996, a small Irish press approached
Nuala O’Faolain, then a writer for the Irish Times newspaper, to publish
a collection of her opinion columns. She offered to write an introduction
to give the opinions a context - to explain the life experience that had
shaped this Irish woman’s views - and, convinced that none but a few diehard
fans of the columns would ever see the book, she took the opportunity
to interrogate herself, as fully and candidly as she could, as to what
she had made of her life. But the introduction, the ‘accidental memoir
of a Dublin woman’, was discovered, and ‘Are You Somebody?’ became an
international bestseller. It launched a new life for its author at a time
when she had long let go of expectations that anything could dislodge
patterns of regret and solitude well fixed and too familiar. Suddenly
in mid-life there was the possibility of radical change. Whereas the memoir
ended with its author reconciled to a peaceful if lonely future, now opportunities
opened up, and there were thrilling choices to make - choices that forced
her to address the question of how to live a better life herself and,
therefore, of what makes any life better. This memoir begins at the moment
when O’Faolain’s life began to change, and its both tells the story of
life in the subtle, radical, and, above all, unforeseen renewal, and meditates
on that story. It is on one level a tale of good fortune chasing out bad
- of an accidental harvest of happiness. But it is also a provocative
examination of one woman’s experience of ‘the crucible of middle age’
- a time of life that faces in two directions, forging the shape of the
years to come, and clarifying and solidifying one’s relationships to friends
and lovers (past and present), family and self. Fiercely intelligent,
hilarious, moving, generous, and full of surprises, this book is a crystalline
reflections of a singular character, utterly engaged in life.
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Voyage of the Catalpa:
A Perilous Journey and Six Irish Rebels Escape to Freedom by Peter Stevens
Setting out from New Bedford, Massachusetts
on April 29, 1875, the American whaling barque ‘Catalpa’ undertook a secret
year-long mission to liberate a group of Irishmen known as ‘The Freemantle
Six’ from an Australian prison. The six men had been soldiers in the British
army when they took the secret Fenian Oath and pledged themselves to fight
for Irish independence and armed insurrection against the British military.
Arrested in 1866 and tried for treason against the Crown, they were sentenced
to imprisonment and slow death in ‘a hellish foreign land.’ After eight
years languishing in Freemantle Gaol and aided by a worldwide network
of Irish nationalists and undercover agents the Freemantle Six escaped
to the Australian coast where the ‘Catalpa’ was waiting to escort them
to freedom. But their trials were only just beginning. The obstacles they
overcame, from armed British vessels to the full fury of the sea, made
their escape the stuff of international headlines and legends.
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