Thomas D’Arcy McGee: passion, reason, and politics, 1825–1857, vol. I David A. Wilson (McGill–Queen’s University Press, $39.95) ISBN 9780773533578 Now a somewhat obscure figure, Thomas D’Arcy McGee is a prime subject for scholarly biography. As author David A. Wilson’s concluding paragraph notes, McGee went from extreme Irish republican to extreme Irish American Catholic to extreme … Read more
Fenians, freedmen, and Southern whites: race and nationality in the era of Reconstruction Mitchell Snay (Louisiana State University Press, $40) ISBN 9780807132739What do Southern Klansmen, their politically aroused former slaves and American-based Irish nationalists have in common? Not a lot, it turns out. Mitchell Snay aspires in this ambitious comparative study to tease out a … Read more
A provisional dictator: James Stephens and the Fenian movement Marta Ramón (University College Dublin Press, €18.95) ISBN 9781904558651 James Stephens was not an original thinker like Karl Marx, Giuseppe Mazzini or Michael Bakunin: in fact, as Marta Ramón makes clear in her fine new biography, he could barely write a coherent sentence about politics. Nor … Read more
Kilmainham Gaol Inchicore Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8 +353 (0)1 4535984 /4532037 (fax), kilmainhamgaol@opw.ie April–Sept.: daily 9.30am–6pm (last admission one hour before closing) Oct.–March: Mon.–Sat. 9.30am–5.30pm; Sun. 10am–6pm Adult €5.30; senior/group €3.70; child/student €2.10; family €11.50 by Tony Canavan For many years Kilmainham Gaol was a shrine to Ireland’s struggle for freedom in which many Irish rebels were … Read more
Where was your family during the famine? Animo Television 8 September 2008, RTÉ 1 by John Gibney The notion of tracing one’s ancestors in any kind of formalised way can easily prompt Irish people to cynicism, usually (and unfairly) directed at Irish-Americans. But the US is fertile ground for genealogy, for in a country where … Read more