Major Henry McClintock’s Old Irish Dress (1943) has been an inspiration and a pleasure to many readers. In this and later editions he assembled many of the sources—written, pictorial and archaeological—relating to Irish costume from the earliest times. His labours have only recently been superseded by Mairead Dunlevy’s Dress in Ireland (1989). In McClintock’s enlarged … Read more
The editors have set out to place County Donegal in its local, national and European contexts by combining the work of archaeologists, medievalists, Celtic scholars, geographers, place name scholars and historians of economics, culture and politics. The result is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study ever undertaken of Donegal. The geographical entity we know today as … Read more
Eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall seems an appropriate time for the arrival of new European histories which attempt to give East and West parity of esteem. Such histories are now wending their way to the bookstores. Europe: a History has garnered the most headlines (and sales). The layout is innovative. The … Read more
Shane O’Neill, the great Ulster lord of the mid-sixteenth century, merits a biography. Brady’s is accessible, exceptionally well-written and strong on high politics and Anglo-Irish relations. Shane’s visit to the court of Elizabeth is no longer a barbarous freak-show but the subject of court intrigue. There is the state’s botched attempt to poison O’Neill by … Read more
Historians of sixteenth-century Ireland have often grappled with the question of when the English Tudor monarchs decided to reconquer the country. Although it is clear that Ireland was almost totally subdued by the death in 1603 of Elizabeth I (the last of the Tudors), it is by no means certain when the Tudor reconquest began. … Read more