‘At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master.’ With this parable the budding English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay illustrated the central argument of his 1828 debut essay ‘History’, which advocated that historical scholarship could benefit … Read more
Sir, —With reference to the review of David Lynch’s Radical politics inmodern Ireland: the Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896–1904 byFintan Lane in the May/June issue of HI, the ISRP did not come to anend in 1904. George Spain of Manchester was a member of the IrishRepublican Brotherhood. He fought in the 1916 Rising and the … Read more
Subversive law in Ireland 1879–1920: from ‘unwritten law’ to the Dáil courts Heather Laird (Four Courts Press, E45) ISBN 1851828761 In this study the author looks at the self-help schemes put in place by the native Irish to settle their grievances by devising alternative tribunals in which they might be aired and adjudicated upon in … Read more
Ireland: a social and cultural history, 1922–2002 Terence Brown (Harper Perennial, €15) ISBN 0007125761For this third edition of his enormously influential survey of the social and cultural history of independent Ireland, Terence Brown has brought us up to the year 2002. This is an interesting development, for it involves the chronicling of the culture wars … Read more
At a time when there is a greater acknowledgement of the role played by Irishmen in the British army, there is a group of Irishwomen with a unique claim to recognition for their humanitarian work among soldiers. Elise Sandes was the founder of a welfare movement that survives today. She was an evangelical Christian and … Read more