A chara, —I wish to respond to Patrick Garry’s article ‘Cá bhfuil mé?: Dublin’s Irish street names under threat’ (HI 13.3, May/June 2005). Mr Garry’s article primarily seeks to undermine the reliability of Irish forms of street names in Sráidainmneacha Bhaile Átha Cliath/Dublin City Streetnames, which was published by Dublin City Council in 2004. The … Read more
The Irish art of controversy Lucy McDiarmid (Lilliput Press, E20) ISBN 1843510693 On 4 June 1957 the British ambassador in Dublin, Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, writing to Sir Charles Dixon at the Commonwealth Relations Office, commented: ‘Apart from partition itself, the two main “official” grievances in this country against us are the Lane pictures and Casement, … Read more
Pushers Out: the inside story of Dublin’s anti-drugs movement André Lyder (Trafford, E19.50 paperback) ISBN 1412050995 Despite the huge amount of attention given by the media to the impact of drug use, particularly heroin, on Irish life from the 1980s onwards, it has not received a great deal of attention from historians either in political … Read more
Carson: the man who divided Ireland Geoffrey Lewis (Hambledon and London, price £19.99) ISBN 1852854545 Writing in 1953, H. Montgomery Hyde, the biographer of Edward Carson and sometime Ulster Unionist MP, commented that ‘today a new generation has grown up in Ulster in an atmosphere of relative political security. To its members Carson is a … Read more
Subversive law in Ireland 1879–1920: from ‘unwritten law’ to the Dáil courts Heather Laird (Four Courts Press, E45) ISBN 1851828761 In this study the author looks at the self-help schemes put in place by the native Irish to settle their grievances by devising alternative tribunals in which they might be aired and adjudicated upon in … Read more