By Joe Culley (Twitter: @TheRealCulls) In the 1930s Ernie O’Malley began conducting interviews with some of his former comrades from his revolutionary days. Initially the interviews were informal and were designed to help him prepare his memoirs. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, O’Malley intensified his research, travelling the country as a sort … Read more
GERARD FARRELL Palgrave Macmillan €96 ISBN 9783319593623 Reviewed by James O’Neill James O’Neill is an independent heritage consultant based in Belfast. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, or maybe it’s the recent 400th anniversary of the start of the Ulster plantation, but there has been a recent influx of monographs and edited volumes examining that pivotal yet … Read more
BREANDÁN MAC SUIBHNE Oxford University Press £20 ISBN 9780198738619 Reviewed by Emily Mark-FitzGerald Emily Mark-FitzGerald is Associate Professor of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin. In Ways of seeing (1972), John Berger wrote of how ‘capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as … Read more
CLAIRE WILLS Allen Lane €30 ISBN 9781846147166 Reviewed by Mary Kenny Mary Kenny’s most recent book is Am I a feminist? Are you? (New Island). Everyone is familiar with the legend that Irish migrants to Britain were greeted with landlords’ notices saying ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’. I have never quite believed this particular … Read more
CAROLE HOLOHAN Liverpool University Press £80 ISBN 9781786941237 Reviewed by Tom Inglis Tom Inglis is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin. In 1966 Éamon de Valera was elected president of Ireland. He was 84 years old. His dream of Ireland as a country of cosy homesteads and comely maidens was shattered. Ireland was … Read more