JANE FENLON and SARAH MAGUIRE Four Courts Press €50 ISBN 9781801510899 Reviewed by Eoin Swithin Walsh Eoin Swithin Walsh is the author of Kilkenny: in times of revolution, 1900–1923 (Merrion Press, 2018). One of the significant successes of the ‘decade of centenaries’ has been the upsurge of interest in local histories. Knowing what happened in … Read more
JANE OHLMEYER Oxford University Press €43 ISBN 9780192867681 Reviewed by Hiram Morgan This is a significant survey of Ireland’s involvement in colonialism—both its own colonisation by the English and Scots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and its ubiquitous role in the British and other European empires into the mid-eighteenth century and beyond. Fast-moving, richly … Read more
By Daragh Fitzgerald The ongoing slaughter in Gaza has rightly produced outrage and consistent demonstrations of solidarity in Ireland, demanding a permanent ceasefire—as it has the world over. Irish support for the Palestinian cause is well documented and widely known. Less familiar, however, are the historic links between Irish nationalism and the Jewish diaspora. A … Read more
MICHAEL MARY MURPHY and JIM ROGERS Equinox Publishing £70 ISBN 9781781797808 REVIEWED BY Donal Fallon Donal Fallon is the presenter of the ‘Three Castles Burning’ podcast. It may terrify some readers to read that the LPs that defined their teenage years are now being mulled over by historians and sociologists. In recent years, studies like … Read more
FRANK BARRY Oxford University Press £70 ISBN 9780198878230 REVIEWED BY Colm Keena Colm Keena is a journalist with the Irish Times. A late friend of mine who attended a Church of Ireland school used to tell of going for a job interview with Guardian Royal Exchange in Dublin in the late 1960s and not giving … Read more