LUKE GIBBONS University of Chicago Press $35 ISBN 9780226824475 Reviewed by Angus Mitchell The confluence in 2022 of the centenaries of the founding of the Irish Free State and the publication of Ulysses allowed for a fascinating exchange in cultural diplomacy. Among the more ambitious projects to find support was the minting of a stamp … Read more
By Joe Culley @TheRealCulls You will be forgiven for not having heard of Edmund Sexten Pery, and thus you will likely be surprised to learn that he was one of the great Irish parliamentarians of the late eighteenth century. How could the reputation of a man who was once so significant a figure as to … Read more
RICHARD BOURKE and NIAMH GALLAGHER (eds) Cambridge University Press £22.99 ISBN 9781108799133 Reviewed by Brian Hanley Brian Hanley is Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin. ‘When we were little children Johnnie Redmond was a fool, He bade us to be happy with something called Home Rule, But we’ve learned a thing … Read more
JOHN T. McGREEVY W.W. Norton & Company ISBN 9781324003885 €35 Reviewed by Gerard O’Sullivan Gerard O’Sullivan is a surveyor and a non-practising barrister. As an Irish Catholic, I grew up in an era steeped in traditional religious ritual where clerical authority was unquestioned, and witnessed in my teens the effect on Irish life of the ‘reformation’ … Read more
EOIN KINSELLA Four Courts Press in association with the Irish Defence Forces ISBN 9781801510363 €30 Reviewed by Thomas O’Loughlin Thomas O’Loughlin is Emeritus Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham. ‘The history of the Defence Forces can be characterised as an ongoing search for a defined shape and mission’ (p. 249). So, in … Read more