Controversial issues in Anglo-Irish relations 1910–21 Cornelius O’Leary and Patrick Maume (Four Courts Press, ?45) ISBN 1851826572 The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic thaw in Anglo-Irish relations following the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985—giving Dublin an entrenched role in the North—and the intense cooperation between the two governments that underlay the 1998 Good Friday … Read more
Kevin O’Higgins: builder of the Irish state John McCarthy (Irish Academic Press, E27.50) ISBN 0716534142 It is a sad fact that the spot where Ireland’s first minister for justice lay after he was fatally wounded by three IRA men in 1927 is marked by a ridiculously small cross made by a spade in setting concrete. … Read more
Noisy Island: a short history of Irish popular music Gerry Smyth (Cork University Press, E19.95) ISBN 1859183875 Did you ever have the feeling that many aspects of our lives would be better kept out of academic hands—and minds? This was my initial reaction as I waded through the introduction to Gerry Smyth’s Noisy Island. Rock … Read more
Ireland and the British Empire Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series Kevin Kenny (ed.) Oxford University Press, £30 ISBN 0199251835 Victoria’s Ireland Peter Gray (ed.) Four Courts Press, £55 ISBN 185 1 827587 Irish participation in empire is most commonly considered a paradox: another unnatural by-product of the malign influence of British … Read more
Politics and the Irish working class, 1830–1945 Fintan Lane and Donal Ó Drisceoil (eds) (Palgrave Macmillan, £55) ISBN 1 40393179 The editors of this volume lay out their stall at the outset by attributing the failure of labour in politics to the traditional ‘three evil geniuses of socialism: the priest, peasant and patriot’. The wide-ranging … Read more