Nick Maxwell

Gaelic Ireland: land, lordship and settlement, c.1250-c.1650, Patrick J. Duffy, David Edwards & Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds.). (Four Courts Press, £39.50) ISBN 1851825479

In the period 1250 to 1650 covered by this book there was no single entity known as Gaelic Ireland. The term has been devised by modern historians to signify collectively the numerous quasi-autonomous Gaelic and Gaelicised lordships that existed in medieval Ireland. The sources from which the detailed workings of individual Gaelic lordships in the … Read more

Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union: Ireland in the 1790s, Jim Smyth (ed.). (Cambridge University Press, £35) ISBN 0521661099 The Concise History of Ireland, Seán Duffy. (Gill & Macmillan, £19.99) ISBN 071713055 The Timechart History of

Reading these histories of Ireland, I could not help wondering who they were written for. The writers’ fellow historians? Hardly! They know too much already to be interested in a brief general survey of our history. The general Irish public? Perhaps, though many of them know the outline already and are more likely to seek … Read more

Rebellion and Remembrance in Modern Ireland, Laurence M. Geary (ed.). (Four Courts Press, £35.44) ISBN 185182586X Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union: Ireland in the 1790s, Jim Smyth (ed.). (Cambridge University Press, £35) ISBN 052166109

As the Irish parliament enacts the union a deputation of dissident MPs burst into the study of Robert Emmet, demanding that he go immediately to France in search of armed assistance. Elsewhere Father Murphy organises his parishioners into an insurrectionary band. Later Michael Dwyer marries Anne Devlin, before both flee to Australia. These self-evidently ludicrous … Read more

The Two Patricks: RTÉ’s Lost Among Wolves & Fanatic Heart

Two recent TV documentaries on Irish revolutionaries, both in RTÉ’s True Lives series, offer a strikingly contrasting view of the lives of two men caught up in the politics of the twentieth century. Patrick Pearse and Pat Breslin—the former firmly established in the pantheon of Irish nationalism, the latter virtually forgotten except by his children … Read more