Seán Beattie (ed.)Donegal Historical Society€30ISSN 041627732021 Reviewed by Matthew Stout The editor of the Donegal Annual had a hard act to follow in 2021. In 797, for the bicentennial of Colum Cille’s death, the monks of Iona created what later became known as the Book of Kells. Now, for the 1,500th anniversary of Colum Cille’s … Read more
DAVID DICKSON Yale University Press €22 ISBN 9780300229462 Reviewed by John Cunningham ‘Many of the best streets are entirely occupied by shops; these have all large windows, in which the articles are exhibited to attract purchasers. They also have over the doors a plank painted black, on which is inscribed, in gold letters, the name … Read more
By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls In the middle of the Civil War, an IRA intelligence report from November 1922 assessed the 52 pro-Treaty members of Dublin Corporation thus: ten Treaty, including (Lord Mayor) Laurence O’Neill and Alfie Byrne; 32 pro-Treaty, ‘but not so bad’; and ten hard pro-Treatyites, ‘real bad eggs’. One of those ‘bad eggs’ … Read more
SEAMUS DEANE Cambridge University Press €28 ISBN 9781108892810 Reviewed by Vona Groarke Vona Groarke is a poet and author. Her Link: poet and world will be published in October 2021 by the Galley Press. When the published essay seems, so often now, to have the qualifier ‘personal’ attached, it is as refreshing as it is … Read more
LEESA WHEATLEY and FLORIAN KROBB (trans. & ed.) Cork University Press €29 ISBN 9781782054351 Reviewed by Róisín Healy Róisín Healy lectures in History and Philosophy at NUI, Galway. A journalist based in Berlin, Richard Arnold Bermann travelled to Ireland at a moment of great political uncertainty for both Ireland and Europe. In the summer of … Read more