Nick Maxwell

IRISH SPEAKERS AND SCHOOLING IN THE GAELTACHT, 1900 TO THE PRESENT

TOM O’DONOGHUE and TERESA O’DOHERTY Palgrave Macmillan €74.89 ISBN 9783030260200 Reviewed by Tony Lyons Dr Tony Lyons formerly lectured in Education History at Mary Imaculate College, University of Limerick. This book is something of a tour de force within the realms of the history of Irish education and schooling. It is an elucidating embrace of … Read more

IRISH DIVORCE: a history

DIANE URQUHART Cambridge University Press £22.99 ISBN 9781108717250 Reviewed by Mary Kenny Mary Kenny is a founder member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement and author of Goodbye to Catholic Ireland (New Island Books, 2000). Historically, there has seldom been any great ‘clamour’—as Professor Diane Urquhart puts it—for divorce in Ireland. Although the Brehon laws … Read more

THE ALLIANCE OF PIRATES: Ireland and Atlantic piracy in the early seventeenth century

CONNIE KELLEHER Cork University Press €30 ISBN 9781782053651 Reviewed by Eamon Darcy Eamon Darcy is a historian of early modern Ireland and Britain and lectures at Maynooth University. The image of swashbuckling pirates plundering ships with impunity is integral to the popular perception of the historical world of piracy. Yet, as Connie Kelleher’s excellent book, … Read more

DIFFERENT AND THE SAME: a folk history of Protestants in independent Ireland

DEIRDRE NUTTALL Eastwood Books €25 ISBN 9781916137561 Reviewed by Ida Milne Growing up in Wexford in the 1960s, children in our Church of Ireland family would have noticed little difference between Protestant and Catholic other than going to a different church on a Sunday. Apart from that, we were fully integrated into local life, like … Read more