Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. I was immediately transported back to my teenage years while leafing through Gary O’Neill’s book. Having been part of the early Punk scene in Dublin, memories come flooding back while looking through the section on the 1970s and ’80s. The book itself is a photographic record of those different youth … Read more
If you enjoyed the first instalment of David A. Wilson’s Thomas D’Arcy McGee biography (HI 16.6, Nov./Dec. 2008, reviews, p. 65), you’ll want to take a look at this second and concluding volume. Picking up the story from McGee’s 1857 arrival in Montreal, the author remains fundamentally sympathetic to his subject while avoiding the temptation … Read more
The governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, recently said that the bank wasn’t inclined to press for the removal of the ‘Occupy’ protest that has been camped outside it for a number of months. At the very least, the camp adds a bit of colour to the unlovely edifice that is the Central Bank. But … Read more
The Irish Labour Party 1922–73 Niamh Puirseil (University College Dublin Press, €28) William O’Brien 1881–1968 Thomas J. Morrissey SJ (Four Courts Press, €55) In the introduction to her history of the Labour Party, Niamh Puirseil remarks that her subject ‘seems more than a little ashamed of its past’. This is true enough, though this reviewer … Read more
After a short break occasioned by last issue’s ‘special’ on the Flight of the Earls, Bookworm is back. The ‘Flight’ continues to stimulate the public imagination throughout the country, with conferences, seminars, re-enactments, music recitals and publications. A useful starting-point for the uninitiated is Liam Swords’s The Flight of the Earls: a popular history (Columba … Read more