Nick Maxwell Sir,—In your editorial (HI 20.6, Nov./Dec. 2012) on the Cameron–Salmond agreement at Edinburgh to clarify in advance the legal aspects of a referendum on Scottish independence, you state that Ireland at the time of the 1912–14 Home Rule crisis was ‘not so lucky’, in that a ‘sizeable section of the British establishment’ refused to recognise … Read more
Irish Republicanism in Scotland, 1858–1916: Fenians in exile Máirtín S. Ó Catháin (Irish Academic Press, €24.95/£19.95 pb) ISBN 97807165 28586 During the heady days of 1867 and 1868, the Dublin rising, the Manchester Martyrs, the Clerkenwell prison bomb, the abortive raid on Chester Castle and many smaller episodes ensured that Fenianism generated endless column inches … Read more
January 1 1973 Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) along with Denmark and the United Kingdom. 5 1953 Twenty-seven people were killed when a BEA Viking aircraft crash-landed just short of the runway at Nutt’s Corner (Belfast) airport. 5 1973 Gerald Boland (87), revolutionary and founder member of Fianna Fáil who served in a … Read more
A provisional dictator: James Stephens and the Fenian movement Marta Ramón (University College Dublin Press, €18.95) ISBN 9781904558651 James Stephens was not an original thinker like Karl Marx, Giuseppe Mazzini or Michael Bakunin: in fact, as Marta Ramón makes clear in her fine new biography, he could barely write a coherent sentence about politics. Nor … Read more
States have long had an interest in how key events in their past are commemorated, and historians have equally long been complicit in promoting dominant political mythologies. Since the development of professional, academic history, however, its practitioners have tended to view commemorations more as opportunities for attempting new interpretations and for critiquing the official version. … Read more