Sir,—I was dismayed by Seamus Deane’s intemperate review of James Donnelly’s Captain Rock (HI 18.6, Nov./Dec. 2010), having long been an admirer of Deane’s writing. He did your readers no favours, ignoring much of the content of a book that offers the most comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of the Rockite movement to date. Deane, it … Read more
The history of cricket in County Kilkenny—the forgotten game Michael O’Dwyer (O’Dwyer Books, ‘Garvaghey’, College Gardens, Kilkenny, e35 + e7 p&p) Michael O’Dwyer’s book is correctly subtitled ‘the forgotten game’. Whatever else we may think of when we think of Kilkenny, cricket hardly leaps to mind. And yet this book, drawing on the ample documentation … Read more
By 1871 ‘Captain’ Charles Cunningham Boycott had been on Achill Island for seventeen years and had proven himself to be a good and successful farmer in a hostile and challenging environment; quite understandably, he wanted to move on to farm better land on the mainland, somewhere he could race his horses and be closer to … Read more
The Friar’s Bush cemetery on Stranmillis Road, Belfast, may only be two acres in size, but its history is far grislier than you might expect—plague, body-snatching, famine and murder are all part of its story. The gates have been closed since 1869 and only family members can get in—to be buried—but aside from the graves … Read more
In the wake of the 1798 rebellion a wave of agrarian agitation swept Munster. Superficially the disaffection—centred on the counties of Limerick, Cork and Tipperary, although there were incidents throughout the province—seemed to be the latest manifestation of the long-term phenomenon of ‘Whiteboyism’. This generic term denotes the activities of the agrarian secret societies that … Read more