Nick Maxwell Gerard Murphy’s new book is the latest examination of the Protestant experience in revolutionary Cork. It offers an engaging narrative, often based on extensive research, that will open new doors for Irish historians. Murphy provocatively argues that the IRA secretly executed up to 40 Cork Protestants in 1922, prompting a sectarian exodus from the city. … Read more
The press release for Donnacha Ó Beacháin’s pithily titled Destiny of the Soldiers: Fianna Fáil, Irish Republicanism and the IRA, 1926–1973 (Gill & Macmillan, 538pp, €29.99/£26.99, ISBN 9780717147632) claims that it ‘is the first detailed examination of the links between the natural party of Irish government and militant republicanism’. But as the electorate waits in … Read more
Traveller (non) history Recent events at Dunsink Lane, just outside Dublin, have put the issue of Travellers back in the news. In an attempt, they claimed, to clamp down on illegal activity (dumping, diesel-laundering, the handling of stolen goods, etc.), the local authorities, backed up by hundreds of Gardaí, many in riot gear, closed off … Read more
Sir, —The Autumn issue of History Ireland has just come through the letterbox and I happen to have opened it on Áine Maire Chadwick’s letter on White Sorrel, the white horse so famously associated with King Billy. As your correspondent points out, this was not the horse ridden by William at the Battle of … Read more
Sir, —In his response (HI 12.3, Autumn 2004) to my review of his Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (HI 12.2, Summer 2004), David Fitzpatrick states that he ‘could not afford the academic luxury of anodyne “impartiality” (as distinct from “multipartiality”)’, having made the tu quoque argument that ‘the reviewer who sets out to expose political prejudice … Read more