THOMAS LEAHY Cambridge University Press £18.99 pb 9781108767033 Reviewed by Patrick Mulroe Patrick Mulroe is the author of Bombs, bullets and the border. Policing Ireland’s frontier: Irish security policy, 1969–1978 (Irish Academic Press, 2017). In The intelligence war against the IRA, Cardiff University politics lecturer Thomas Leahy deals with some of the big questions related … Read more
COLIN BARR Cambridge University Press £75 ISBN 9781107040922 Reviewed by Oliver P. Rafferty SJ Oliver P. Rafferty SJ is professor of modern Irish and ecclesiastical history at Boston College. Colin Barr sets out to tell the story of the dominance of the Irish Catholic Church in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century, and what … Read more
LOUISE NUGENTColumba Books€26.99ISBN 9781782183723 Reviewed by Meredith Cutrer Meredith Cutrer is a Ph.D student in University College Dublin’s School of History. One need not have spent much time studying medieval Ireland to appreciate that the Irish landscape is imbued with the sacred. As the number of holy sites attest, religion has long been a powerful … Read more
DARREN McGETTIGAN Four Courts Press €24.95 ISBN 9781846828362 Reviewed by Seán Duffy Seán Duffy is Professor of Medieval Irish and Insular History at Trinity College, Dublin. Readers will know that there are four provinces in Ireland—Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. Many will also know that the Irish for ‘province’ is cúige—hence we say Cúige Uladh, … Read more
BIRTH OF THE BORDER:the impact of partition in Ireland CORMAC MOOREMerrion Press€19.99ISBN 9781785372933 WITHOUT A DOG’S CHANCE:the nationalists of Northern Ireland and the Irish Boundary Commission, 1920–25 JAMES. A. COUSINSIrish Academic Press€24.95ISBN 9781788551021 Reviewed by Martin Mansergh It should be said at the outset that both books are excellent and informative, while coming at the … Read more