Nick Maxwell

GILLIAN O’BRIEN Doubleday €16.99 ISBN 9781781620502 Reviewed by John Gibney John Gibney is Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy series. Gillian O’Brien’s new book could be described as a travelogue of Ireland’s ‘dark tourism’—those sites associated with the titular famine, death and rebellion, explored here by the author with … Read more

 ALEXANDER O’HARA Oxford University Press €62.65 ISBN 9780190858001 Reviewed by Meredith Cutrer Meredith Cutrer is a Ph.D student in University College Dublin’s School of History. Whether one loves him or hates him, few will disagree that the Irish monk Columbanus was remarkable. At once an unyielding ascetic, a provocative firebrand, an indefatigable monastic founder, an … Read more

MARIA LUDDY and MARY O’DOWD Cambridge University Press £74.99 ISBN 9781108731904 Reviewed by Mary Kenny It was said that a traditional Irish marriage proposal was ‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’, which was thought both comical and macabre. If ever such a proposal was made, however, it did underline quite shrewdly the … Read more

  By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls   During the assault, he first struck his father with a hatchet. He then grabbed a flat chisel from the workbench and drove it into the man’s chest. That was the fatal blow. It was August 1832, and John ‘Lippy’ Linn never denied that he had murdered his father, William. … Read more