20th-century / Contemporary History

Northern Nationalism: nationalist politics, partition and the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland 1890-1940 Eamon Phoenix (Ulster Historical Foundation, £14.95)

Reviewed by Michael Farrell ‘You had opponents willing to co-operate… We were willing to help…[but] you went on the old political lines, fostering hatreds, keeping one third of the population as if they were pariahs…and relying on those religious differences and difficulties so that you could remain in office for ever’. Joe Devlin, the northern … Read more

‘A Star Chamber affair’: the death of Timothy Coughlan

Gabriel Doherty   It is a dry, frosty January night in Dublin. Suddenly the silence of a suburban street is shattered by the sound of automatic gunfire: it appears that an IRA man has been shot dead while attempting to assassinate a police detective as he returns home from work. However, the situation turns more … Read more

Re-presenting war: the Somme Heritage Centre

David Officer A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles resting in a communications trench at the Somme, 1 July 1916. Historians of Ireland regularly harp on about the often blunt and crude forms in which the past is mobilised by contemporary interests. However, historians themselves pay scant attention to the forms, methods and media … Read more

Ulster Unionist Propaganda against Home Rule 1912-14

Michael Foy We live in an age of media gurus, spin doctors and soundbites, when advertising agencies have been invested with almost divine powers to sell policies, transform images and win elections. The now familiar relationship between the mass media and politics first made an impact in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe in … Read more