THEO FARRELL Bodley Head £25 ISBN 9781847923462 Reviewed by Lar Joye A story is told of a British Army regimental commander in the early 2000s meeting a group of Afghan elders who gave out to him for burning down their local market-place. Returning to his HQ, he demanded to know what idiot had burnt down … Read more
PAUL O’BRIEN Collins Press €19.99 ISBN 9781848893061 Reviewed by Eamonn T. Gardiner Although painting a vivid picture for readers,Paul O’Brien’s latest offering falls short of thepromised ‘balanced examination’ promised. With this work O’Brien, who has previously established himself as an authority on military strategies during the Anglo-Irish War, dips his toe into the morenuanced world … Read more
MATTHEW STOUT Wordwell Books €35 ISBN 9781999790905 Reviewed by Pat Wallace So much progress has been made on so many levels by so many specialists over the past half-century that there is now an ocean of data available on Ireland’s first historical millennium. Material culture is only part of this ocean and its specialities range … Read more
By Joe Culley Breasal Ó Caollaí, Niall O’Hagan and Ken Finlay (eds), The last voyage of the Leinster: remembering the Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead mailboat (Leinster Centenary Committee, €15 hb, 48pp, ISBN 9781909751767). Patrick F. O’Donovan, Stanley’s letter: the national school system and inspectors in Ireland 1831–1922 (Galway Education Centre, €38 hb, 358pp, ISBN 9781999754006). … Read more
NOEL DORR, Royal Irish Academy, €30, ISBN 9781-908997647 By Cillian McGrattan Cillian McGrattan lectures in Politics at the University of Ulster. Former Irish senior civil servant Noel Dorr revisits the increasingly well-furrowed ground of the Sunningdale period (1973–4) in this autobiography-cum-history. Although Dorr’s perspective on events was rather limited at the time owing to his … Read more