DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN Four Courts Press €35 ISBN 9781846826672 Reviewed by: Conor Kostick Discussions about medieval Ireland have often been highly politicised and contested. In the early twentieth century, activists for independence, from Arthur Griffith to James Connolly, became passionate in their engagement with Ireland’s medieval past in order to support Eoin Mac Neill in … Read more
JIM SMYTH (ed.) University of Notre Dame Press $40 ISBN 9780268101749 Reviewed by: Brian Hanley Brian Hanley is an Irish History Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. This book is a welcome reminder that it is possible for historians writing about Ireland’s long war to be fair-minded, even-handed and empathetic. In that alone it … Read more
PATRICK MULROE Irish Academic Press €24.99 ISBN 9781911024521 Reviewed by: Deaglán de Bréadún Deaglán de Bréadún is the author of Power play: the rise of modern Sinn Féin (Irish Academic Press, 2015). Patrick Mulroe has performed a very useful public service in this book of almost 300 pages by chronicling and analysing the approach of … Read more
TOM BURKE Mercier Press €17.99 ISBN 9781781174845 Reviewed by: Patrick Callan Patrick Callan is a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin. Michael Wall enlisted in January 1916 as a second lieutenant in the Royal Irish Regiment. A nineteen-year-old officer, he died during the Battle of Messines in June … Read more
DAVID ARMITAGE Yale University Press £18.99 ISBN 9780300149821 Reviewed by: Eoin Dillon An air of self-congratulation wafted off the panjandrums as they passed judgement on the commemorative events of 1916. ‘That went well’, they concluded: no outbreaks of civil disturbance, no attacks on state power, not even a discernible spike in support for advanced nationalism. … Read more