Nick Maxwell Sir,—In the course of his article ‘A Church in Crisis’ (HI Autumn 2000) James S. Donnelly Jr reviewing the situation of the Irish Catholic Church today discusses the impact made on the Irish public by the RTÉ television programme States of Fear (April-May 1999). He says: For their thoroughly researched set of programmes the editors … Read more
This collection of eleven articles, introduced and edited by Hiram Morgan, grew from a seminar on political ideology in the hundred years covering the second half of the sixteenth century and the pre-Cromwellian half of the seventeenth, that he directed at the Folger Institute, Washington DC, in 1995. His introductory essay ‘Beyond Spenser?’ takes the … Read more
Sean Connolly opens this volume, the third in the Folger Institute series, with a quotation from R.B. McDowell’s Irish Public Opinion, 1750-1800 (1944). Remarkably and regrettably it is only within the last decade or so that scholars have begun building on the ground broken by McDowell over half a century ago, and for that reason … Read more
This volume on political thought in and concerning Ireland, is one of three resulting from a series of seminars convened at the Folger Institute under the aegis of John Pocock, which, regrettably, have not been published by the same press. The present volume, treating of the years pre-1641 to 1700, has four principal strengths. First, … Read more
Sean Lester, Protestant nationalist, Irish diplomat, League of Nations High Commissioner in Danzig (Gdansk) and the last Secretary General of the League of Nations, is a fascinating subject for a biography. Douglas Gageby’s account of Lester’s life and times presents a vivid picture of Lester’s metamorphosis from nationalist to internationalist and from Irish diplomat to … Read more