Nick Maxwell – Page 829 – History Ireland

‘The glory of being Britons’: civic unionism in nineteenth-century Belfast

‘The glory of being Britons’: civic unionism in nineteenth-century Belfast John Bew (Irish Academic Press, €39.95) ISBN 9780716529743 This book challenges much received wisdom. Most accounts of nineteenth-century Ulster unionism emphasise the role of Orangeism and Evangelicalism in sustaining a pan-Protestant alliance and argue that its alleged cultural hegemony stifled alternative political currents within Ulster … Read more

The insider: the Belfast prison diaries of Eamonn Boyce, 1956–1962

The insider: the Belfast prison diaries of Eamonn Boyce, 1956–1962 Anna Bryson (ed.) (Lilliput Press, €40) ISBN 9781843511298 The history of the IRA ‘border campaign’ of 1956–62 is in its infancy. Very few titles have focused on the republican offensive that made Seán South and Fergal O’Hanlon household names of their generation. This writer’s From … Read more

Print the legend

In 1864 a horse called ‘Biddy Early’ in a race at Scariff refused a jump, unseating its rider. This was typical of the type of story recorded by Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory when she visited Feakle some twenty years after Biddy’s death. Her book Visions and beliefs in the west of Ireland was published in … Read more

Coolacrease. The true story of the Pearson executions—an incident in the Irish War of Independence

Coolacrease. The true story of the Pearson executions—an incident in the Irish War of Independence Philip O’Connor (ed.) (Aubane Historical Society, €20) ISBN 9781903497487 On a superficial level this book is about an incident in County Offaly during the Irish War of Independence in which two brothers were executed by the IRA. Richard and Abraham … Read more

Bookworm

Bookworm is always on the lookout for publications that appeal to a particular type of (usually desperate) reader: Leaving Cert and A-level students, lazy undergrads, or general readers whose enthusiasm for history is not matched by the necessary leisure time to plough through academic monographs (although with the deepening recession that could change). A case … Read more