Sir,—I was somewhat disappointed with John Borgonovo’s review of my book The year of disappearances (HI 19.1, Jan./Feb. 2011). I would have expected more in the line of constructive criticism rather than the dismissal that the book received. My book, he asserts, ‘cannot be presented as serious scholarship; it is a work in which speculation … Read more
Discover Your National Library National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street www.nli.ie, discover@nli.ie, +353 (0)1 6030277 by Tony Canavan Located in the old Kildare Street Club, which until recently housed the ‘Strangers to Citizens’ exhibition (and it is a pity that it could not be permanent), ‘Discover Your National Library’ is at once an attempt … Read more
Would you believe? The murder of Fr James Coyle in Birmingham, Alabama, 1921 21 March 2010, RTÉ 1 Rising Road: A true tale of love, race, and religion in America (Oxford University Press, New York, $27.95) ISBN 9780195379792 by John Gibney The Catholic priest James Coyle was born in Drum, Co. Roscommon, in 1873 … Read more
This latest in the series by Tom Garvin on twentieth-century Ireland focuses on the 1950s, that pivotal decade during which Ireland belatedly caught up with the modern world. But it is history with a difference. Garvin reconstructs the period not on the basis of personalities or events but on what he calls ‘the public record … Read more
As the centenary anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War approaches, the body of literature on the Irish experience of ‘the war to end all wars’ grows apace. As with other areas of Irish history, popular historians lead the march and are some way ahead of their counterparts in the universities. The past decade … Read more