Sean Farren (Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, £16.50) ISBN 0853895953 This is a thought provoking study. Sean Farren provides us not only with an insight into developments in the schools in both Northern Ireland and the Free State/Republic of Ireland, but shows the extent to which the schools were used by political and … Read more
Ute Lotz-Heumann (Mohr Siebeck, DM198) ISBN 3161474295 In 1605 Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Kassel converted to Calvinism. This act, initially based on the landgrave’s private faith, had far-reaching consequences for his territory, which thirteen years later became entangled in the Thirty Years War, and for his traditionally Lutheran subjects. In a series of ordinances Maurice tried … Read more
Linda Connolly (Palgrave, E80.60) ISBN 33377132X This is a book by a sociologist which has a lot to offer historians. Its central focus is on the women’s movement in the Irish Republic from 1970 to the 1990s. The context for this is set by a brief survey of developments over the preceding hundred and more … Read more
Finbar Cullen (ed.) (The Ireland Institute, E7.50) ISSSN 13939696 These two volumes make a sharp contrast. The first volume is a reasonably lively set of essays, most of them making a fairly conventional contemporary Irish radical republican argument. Some of these essays are lively and generous in tone but there are plenty of moments of … Read more
R.F. Foster (Allen Lane, £20) ISBN 0713994975Roy Foster has already made an enormous contribution to the writing of Irish history. He has inspired, encouraged, and provoked many of us to engage in/with the reassessment of Irish historical writing and thinking that has marked the last two decades as among the most fruitful in Irish historical … Read more