At the start of every academic year the university lecturer is faced with the task of recommending certain books to the new, eager crop of students taking his or her subject. Of equal importance, and frequently undertaken with even more enthusiasm, is the task of warning students off certain other books regarded as flawed, tainted, … Read more
In their preface to this handsome volume the joint editors acknowledge that while it has been their aim to give some account of the chief battles of Ireland’s history their principal concern is with the political and social background. Although at first sight this might appear to belie the title of the book, their approach … Read more
The editors have set out to place County Donegal in its local, national and European contexts by combining the work of archaeologists, medievalists, Celtic scholars, geographers, place name scholars and historians of economics, culture and politics. The result is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study ever undertaken of Donegal. The geographical entity we know today as … Read more
In a parliament which met at Dublin in 1460 a famous statute was passed in which it was stated that the land of Ireland is, and at all times has been, corporate of itself by the ancient laws and customs used in the same, freed of the burden of any special law of the realm … Read more
A tower house is a fortified medieval residence of stone, usually four or more stories in height. Like most of the surviving monuments of our medieval past, the majority of Irish tower houses are in poor condition, with collapsed walls and ivy shrouded exteriors reflecting centuries of neglect. Yet these ruins, the remnants of a … Read more