Nick Maxwell Sir,—I could not help noticing that in the otherwise excellent article about the famous Soloheadbeg (County Tipperary) ambush of January 1919 in the spring 1997 issue of History Ireland that Kevin Haddick Flynn (amongst others) is still claiming that this was the first action of the War of Independence. Not so. A flag must be … Read more
Sir,—I agree with your reviewer of Roy Foster’s The Apprentice Mage (Eve Patten, HI Summer 1997), that ‘the detail of Foster’s work is important’. As a biographer of John MacBride (Major John MacBride [Westport Historical Society 1991]), I looked forward to the publication of The Apprentice Mage. Eve Patten also writes that ‘this is a … Read more
Michael Ryan is Curator of the Chester Beatty Library; Michael Brown lectures in Scottish history at the University of St Andrews; Henry A. Jeffries teaches history at Thornhill College, Derry; Gráinne Henry teaches history at Presentation College, Tralee; Emmet O’Connor lectures in history at the University of Ulster,Magee College; J.H. Andrews is formerly associate professor … Read more
Among the various terms applied to works of reference, ‘atlas’ has now become the most user-friendly, more companionable than ‘companion’ and certainly less repellent than ‘dictionary’, ‘directory’ or ‘encyclopaedia’. To match its changing semantic context, the typical modern atlas has fewer and simpler maps than its mid-century predecessors; it also has more non-cartographic illustrations, especially … Read more
For most people, historical knowledge is constituted by the oral and the visual. The oral tradition transmits a sense of tradition and belonging creating an identity which is buttressed by visual representations which help lodge potent images in the mind. Both oral and visual traditions are essentially backward looking, helping form a link with the … Read more