Notwithstanding the depressive effect of the phrase ‘back to school’ (should it be banned from shop windows?), it’s that time of year again. Leaving Cert, A-level and undergrad history students can take some solace from the latest in the Historical Association of Ireland’s ‘Life and Times New Series’ (general editor Ciaran Brady), Carla King’s Michael … Read more
As a twenty-something enrolled at the Middle Temple, where he came to know as much about the law as ‘of necromancy’, and making not the slightest attempt to resist the temptations of an ‘idle and luxurious capital’, the future icon of Irish republican nationalism Theobald Wolfe Tone had, of a morning after the night before, … Read more
The strength of the Royal Irish Academy’s special issue on Domestic life in Ireland lies in its editorial courage. Having selected the domestic subject, the editors bring together studies charting diverse material from domestic archaeologies of everyday life through the Neolithic to the provision of 1950s local authority rural housing and the morphology of Celtic … Read more
Bookworm has always had a soft spot for local history, and some very handsome examples of the genre have appeared in recent times. First up is a truly magnificent production: the Eglish Historical Society’s stunning The book of Eglish, where the Oona flows (Eglish Historical Society, 512pp, hb, no price given, ISBN 9781905989263). All human … Read more
Thomas D’Arcy McGee: passion, reason, and politics, 1825–1857, vol. I David A. Wilson (McGill–Queen’s University Press, $39.95) ISBN 9780773533578 Now a somewhat obscure figure, Thomas D’Arcy McGee is a prime subject for scholarly biography. As author David A. Wilson’s concluding paragraph notes, McGee went from extreme Irish republican to extreme Irish American Catholic to extreme … Read more