Sir, —In his examiner’s report on my Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (HI 12.2, Summer 2004), Manus O’Riordan awards me ‘9 out of 10 as to balanced presentation of a voluminous amount of evidence’, but a miserable fail in applying my ‘declared aim of impartiality’ to the ‘accompanying commentary’. Though I declared no such aims in … Read more
Controversial issues in Anglo-Irish relations 1910–21 Cornelius O’Leary and Patrick Maume (Four Courts Press, ?45) ISBN 1851826572 The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic thaw in Anglo-Irish relations following the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985—giving Dublin an entrenched role in the North—and the intense cooperation between the two governments that underlay the 1998 Good Friday … Read more
The Wind that Shakes the Barley Director: Ken Loach by Brian Hanley Film reviews by historians should carry a warning. Aside from the array of personal, political and other prejudices that all reviewers bring to bear on their subject, there is the fact that most historical films will influence far more people’s view of history … Read more
Sir,—The caption—’Women continued to play an active role in the War of Independence’—under the photograph on page 41 of the last issue (Autumn 1996) is misleading on two counts. In the first place, it does not depict a War of Independence flying column but a Civil War one—the Third Battalion flying column (‘Plunkett’s Own’), No.2 … Read more
When the republican campaign against the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and others thought sympathetic to Dublin Castle became more violent and successful in late 1919, the police abandoned hundreds of rural facilities to consolidate shrinking ranks in fewer, fortified stations. The pressure exerted directly on RIC men, their families, friends and those who did business … Read more