Nick Maxwell Travellers’ accounts as source-materials for Irish historians Maynooth Research Guides for Irish Local History C. J. Woods (Four Courts Press, €24.95) ISBN 9781846821325 Here’s Ireland! Be it rambles in Teague Land or Shamrock Land, Lights and shades of Famine-stricken Ireland, Paddy’s dreams or John Bull’s nightmare, on a summer’s jaunt or through winter wet, … Read more
Martial power and Elizabethan political culture: military men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594 Rory Rapple (Cambridge University Press, £60) ISBN 9780521843539 An enduring symbol of Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Merry England’ is Falstaff, Shakespeare’s comic creation. The playwright almost certainly conjured him from the many unemployed army captains loitering about London. When not jossing with the … Read more
Eighteenth-century Ireland: the isle of slaves Ian McBride New Gill History of Ireland 4 (Gill and Macmillan, Ä24) ISBN 9780717116270 There are many paths through the historical forest. Ian McBride’s is different from his predecessors’, and in particular from Edith Johnston’s in the original Gill series published in 1974. His synthesis of advances in … Read more
It is deliciously ironic that a book that takes us to task for creating a ‘liberation myth’ with regard to the War of Independence should have on its front cover an image that is not what it claims to be (see letters, p. 12). Nevertheless, in spite of this and its rather old-fashioned revisionist tone, … Read more
Discover Your National Library National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street www.nli.ie, discover@nli.ie, +353 (0)1 6030277 by Tony Canavan Located in the old Kildare Street Club, which until recently housed the ‘Strangers to Citizens’ exhibition (and it is a pity that it could not be permanent), ‘Discover Your National Library’ is at once an attempt … Read more