Sir,—I have recently done a course of reading on women and Irish nationalism. In two separate accounts—Kathleen Clarke’s autobiography, Revolutionary Woman (1991), and R.M. Fox’s Rebel Irishwomen (1935)—it is said that the clause in the 1916 Proclamation concerning the equality of women was opposed by one of the seven signatories. The source for Fox is … Read more
The Easter Rising Michael Foy and Brian Barton (Sutton Publishing, £14.99) ISBN 0750926163 Considering its importance in modern Irish history, remarkably few scholarly books have been written on the Easter Rising. Michael Foy and Brian Barton’s welcome book, The Easter Rising, is the first in over a generation and meets a long overdue demand by … Read more
Tim Carey (Collins Press) ISBN 1898256896 Entering Mountjoy jail in 1997, having spent two years researching its history for this book, the author sought to ‘step back in time’ so as to make a connection with Mountjoy’s nineteenth-century past. Peering through the spy hole of a cell in the basement of B wing, one of … Read more
Norman McMillan (Tyndall Publications, £24 pb, £42 hb) ISBN 0952597403, pb/hb ISBN? In his first encounter with Trinity College, Dublin, in 1971 the author was shown around the Physics Department, and in passing his attention was drawn to a heap of old notebooks, which he was told belonged to George Francis Fitzgerald, but it seemed … Read more
The idea of holding a world congress of the ‘Irish race’ originated with the Irish Republican Association of South Africa in February 1921. Preliminary work was undertaken by Art O’Brien of the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain, and Robert Brennan, under-secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Second Dáil cabinet. It was … Read more