Nick Maxwell F.S.L. Lyons argued in Ireland since the Famine (1971) that wartime neutrality led to Ireland’s ‘almost total isolation from the rest of mankind’. Philosophically, his ‘Plato’s cave’ metaphor captured a belief in Ireland’s moral failure by refusing to join a just war against Nazi Germany. Ireland, Lyons felt, instead looked inwards, absorbed by its own … Read more
Sir, —I read with great interest the article by Alice McDermott and Mark Power on the 10th (Irish) Division in Salonica in 1915–17 (HI 14.6, Nov./Dec. 2006), and it is good to see recognition of Irish participation on this forgotten front of World War I. However, I do take issue with their assertion of an … Read more
Rebel City: Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin labour movement John Newsinger (Merlin Press, £14.95) ISBN 085036518X Early twentieth-century Ireland witnessed massive labour unrest. John Newsinger’s book is a sympathetic account of the first wave of Irish syndicalism that saw the rise of James Larkin’s ITGWU and its eventual defeat in the Great Lockout of … Read more
The passenger liner Athenia sailed from Glasgow on 1 September 1939, picked up more passengers off Belfast later that day, and departed from Liverpool at about 4am the next morning (2 September), bound for Quebec City and Montreal in Canada. War was declared by the British government at 11am on Sunday 3 September, by which … Read more
Left to the wolves: Irish victims of Stalinist terror Barry McLoughlin (Irish Academic Press, hb e57.50, pb e29.50) ISBN 9780716529149, 9780716529157 One of the things the Soviets did well was compiling and preserving records, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberalisation of access to its archives some brilliant studies have appeared … Read more