Sir, —Your January/February 2005 issue provided food for thought. ‘Shotat Dawn’ by Peter Mulvany established that, when it came to militarydiscipline in the Great War, there were ‘different spanks for differentranks’. The ‘Londonderry Herr’ by Neil Fleming recalled the NaziRibbentrop’s frolics at Mountstewart with the marquess of Londonderry,ex-British air minister, ex-Stormont education minister, ex-Carsonite‘rebel’. In … Read more
Sir, —W.J. Lowe’s ‘Who were the Black-and-Tans?’ (HI 12.3, Autumn 2004) is—like all his work on Irish police history—solid, salutary and illuminating. His findings on the substantial Irish element among men who joined the RIC from the beginning of 1920 are particularly valuable. The ‘folk memory’ that assumed the Black-and-Tans and Auxiliaries (ADRIC) ‘to be … Read more
Sir, —Sinéad ní Shuinéar’s article ‘Apocrypha to canon: inventing Irish Traveller history’ (HI 12.4, Winter 2004) held a particular resonance for me. I am currently researching Irish Travellers and the criminal justice systems on the island of Ireland, north and south. Recently, in consideration of a theoretical framework with which to guide my Ph.D, I … Read more
Do penance or perish: Magdalen asylums in Ireland Frances Finnegan (Oxford University Press, £12.50) ISBN 0195174607Over the past number of years, prompted primarily by a number of television documentaries and films, the purpose and objective of Magdalen asylums in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland have had a considerable airing. However, much of this debate generated more … Read more
Strange kin: Ireland and the American South Kieran Quinlan (Louisiana State University Press, $49.95) ISBN 0807129836 The burden of history shared by pure Irish immigrants within the American South and its mixture of so-called ‘Celts’, ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and ‘Scotch Irish’ is not just stereotypically born of those ethnic groups’ ‘stupidity’ but by an obvious lack of … Read more