COLM TÓIBÍN (ed.) Pennsylvania State University Press $45 ISBN 9780271092898 Reviewed by Daniel Mulhall James Joyce’s Ulysses is full of history, has quite a history and is now part of history. There are not many novels that warrant, or attract, the kind of celebratory surge Ulysses has prompted this year. Even at the ripe age … Read more
By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham, bishop of Clogher, suffered from a skin condition and was recommended to immerse himself in a bath of red wine each evening. However, unknown to the bishop, after his bath an enterprising servant duly decanted the contents into bottles and sold it in the village. This glorious … Read more
SARAH COVINGTON Oxford University Press £25 ISBN 9780198848318 Reviewed by Guy Beiner Guy Beiner is the Sullivan Chair of Irish Studies at Boston College. In the Irish countryside, a hex of ‘scrios Cromaill ort’ (typically cast by an elderly woman or a widow) was dreaded. The ‘Curse of Cromwell’ conjured up deep-rooted and traumatic historical … Read more
JULIE KAVANAGH Grove Press £18.99 ISBN 9781611856415 Reviewed by Barry Walsh Barry Walsh is a solicitor and a former Policy Adviser at the Department of An Taoiseach. The final decades of British rule in Ireland have been examined by many British authors in the last century, often with mixed results. The works of Charles Townshend, … Read more
SHERRA MURPHY Cork University Press €39 ISBN 9781782054559 Reviewed by Tony Canavan Tony Canavan is Consultant Editor of Books Ireland. Ireland’s Natural History Museum—or the ‘Dead Zoo’, as it is called in popular tradition—is well known to most Irish people, from school visits if nothing else. In this interesting book, Sherra Murphy traces the history … Read more