In 1990 British Tory politician Norman Tebbitt coined his controversial ‘cricket test’: irrespective of whether they held UK passports, which team did Asian and Caribbean immigrants to Britain support? The equivalent ‘loyalty test’ in Ireland must surely be the name you use for the ‘Maiden City’ and its surrounding county: Derry or Londonderry? That this … Read more
Scotland and the Ulster plantations: explorations in the British settlements of Stuart Ireland W. P. Kelly and J. R. Young (eds) (Four Courts Press, Ä49.50) ISBN 9781846820762 Has the edited volume of papers had its day? These are all individually very interesting essays but they do not add up to a treatment of the … Read more
The queen’s last map-maker: Richard Bartlett in Ireland, 1600–3 J. H. Andrews (Geography Publications, Ä40) ISBN 9780996602430 In the late 1990s I moved to Belfast, and on a visit to the Tower Museum in L/Derry I came across a bearded statue holding rolls of maps while looking dramatically into the distance. Ulster maps and … Read more
The great guns like thunder: the cannon from the City of Derry B. G. Scott, R. R. Brown, A. G. Leacock and C. J. Salter (Guildhall Hall Press, £25) ISBN 9781906271107 Readers will doubtless know that the ‘Maiden City’s’ ramparts form the most complete surviving urban bastioned enceinte in Ireland or Britain. Moreover, the … Read more
Consolidating conquest: Ireland 1603–1727 Pádraig Lenihan (Pearson Longman, Ä25.20) ISBN 9780582772175 In the last twenty years, a whole coterie of Irish medievalists, early modernists and modernists have sought to emulate and supersede J. C. Beckett’s Making of modern Ireland—with varying degrees of success. Although all these scholars have both identified and explored interlocking themes of … Read more