A Yankee in de Valera’s Ireland: the memoir of David Gray

‘The accumulating evidence supports the view that, even before the fall of France in 1940, de Valera believed that Hitler would win the war and in payment for keeping the Allies out of the Éire ports, he would obtain Northern Ireland on his own terms,’ the US wartime minister to Ireland David Gray wrote in … Read more

The dynamiters: Irish nationalism and political violence in the wider world, 1867–1900

The dynamiters tells the story of the first urban bombing campaign in history, that carried out by Irish-American Fenians in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. It provides a cogent analysis of Fenian urban bombings against the backdrop of transformations in late nineteenth-century revolutionary violence, and provides a detailed analysis of parallels between Irish-American … Read more

Wolfe Tone (2nd edition)

As a twenty-something enrolled at the Middle Temple, where he came to know as much about the law as ‘of necromancy’, and making not the slightest attempt to resist the temptations of an ‘idle and luxurious capital’, the future icon of Irish republican nationalism Theobald Wolfe Tone had, of a morning after the night before, … Read more

How many died during Cromwell’s campaign?

Sir, —In his reassessment of the reputation of Oliver Cromwell, Micheál Ó Siochrú outlines the known historical facts relating to his campaign in Ireland (August 1649–May 1650), detailing his programme of ethnic cleansing, the massacre of military and civilian personnel at Drogheda and Wexford, the forced removal to Connacht and the transportation of slave labour … Read more

The Bayno

Sir,— I am currently researching a book on the Bayno, the famous playcentre established by the first Lord Iveagh in 1909 in the Myra Hall inFrancis Street, Dublin, and then transferred to Bull Alley in 1915.This magnificent building was created by Iveagh inspired by thepeople’s palaces movement in England, particularly that on the Mile EndRoad … Read more