Sir, —While in full agreement with Tim Carey’s platform (HI 14.1, Jan./Feb. 2006) that Mountjoy jail must not be demolished, I wish to correct the statement that: ‘The first four republicans to be executed during the Civil War were shot there by firing squad on 8 December 1922’. That invidious distinction belongs to four young … Read more
Roger Casement in Irish and world history Mary E. Daly (ed.) (Royal Irish Academy, ?30) ISBN 1904890040 This book comprises the papers delivered at a conference—‘Roger Casement in Irish and World History’—held six years ago in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. Mary E. Daly, in her introduction, begins by alluding to Lucy McDiarmid’s comment that … Read more
Witnesses inside the Easter Rising Annie Ryan (Liberties Press, ?12.95) 0954533550In 1947, as the generation that had lived through the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence entered their fifties and sixties, the Fianna Fáil government set up the Bureau of Military History to record the memories of those who were involved in these events. … Read more
Nationalism and the Irish Party: provincial Ireland 1910–1916 Michael Wheatley (Oxford University Press, £50) ISBN 019927357 One of the difficulties in explaining the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1918, after three decades in which it remained virtually unchallenged at the head of Irish nationalism, is that there are so many potential explanations. Was … Read more
Seán MacDiarmada: the mind of the revolution Gerard MacAtasney (Drumlin Publications, €20) ISBN 1873437315 Seán McDermott—or MacDiarmada, as he styled himself—stands out as one of the key architects of the 1916 Rising, which was to lead to an independent Irish state in 1922. Yet, as Gerard MacAtasney claims in this excellent biography, his contribution to … Read more