Returning home explores, without being sentimental or shrill, the post-war experiences in Ireland of the 130,000 Irish men and women from widely different backgrounds who joined the British military during World War II. Ireland was the only European neutral whose nationals voluntarily joined a belligerent power on a large scale. Other 1939 neutrals were either … Read more
The Recruiting Officer George Farqhuar Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Dec. 207–Jan. 2008 by Eamon O’Flaherty Lynn Parker’s revival of The Recruiting Officer at the Abbey follows a string of brilliant productions of eighteenth-century Irish plays with the Rough Magic theatre company. Parker and Rough Magic have a wide repertoire ranging across the centuries—including the brilliant Improbable … Read more
In the newly independent Irish Free State the Catholic Church was deeply insecure about its role in the new state, which had been born out of violence—a violence, moreover, that had revealed how unstable and volatile its flock could be. The ruthlessness and cruelty of the Civil War had appalled churchmen, and the Catholic Church’s … Read more
Over the course of the eighteenth century there was an increasing focus on spectacular forms of entertainment, ranging from peep-shows and waxworks to magic lantern shows and theatrical effects, which prefigure the idea of ‘going to the pictures’. While many of these entertainment techniques remained experimental or confined to the élite, once the Irish-born Robert … Read more
These essays initially appeared as ‘urgent public interventions at critical moments’ between 2001 and 2008. Collected together at the conclusion of India’s blockbuster 2009 general election, they present ‘a detailed underview’ of the consequences and corollaries of democracy (p. xi) and of partition’s long shadow. Gandhi once described independence as a ‘wooden loaf’ (p. 18)—notional … Read more