Sir, —I would like to compliment Matthew Kelly for his excellent article‘. . . and William Rooney spoke in Irish’ in the Jan./Feb. 2007 issue.Rooney is indeed an important figure who is rarely considered, and thearticle does him great justice. While Rooney’s commitment to theemerging nationalism of the late 1890s until his 1901 death wasrelatively … Read more
A chara, —Geraldine Plunkett Dillon’s memoir All in the blood, edited byHonor Ó Brolcháin and reviewed by Eoin Dillon in the Jan./Feb. 2007issue, is an important work. The book and subsequent publicityemphasised the republican aspects, but the Plunketts were not allradical nationalists. The family had divided loyalties, as detailed inmy Wigs and guns, Irish barristers … Read more
Sir, —I read with great interest the article by Alice McDermott and Mark Power on the 10th (Irish) Division in Salonica in 1915–17 (HI 14.6, Nov./Dec. 2006), and it is good to see recognition of Irish participation on this forgotten front of World War I. However, I do take issue with their assertion of an … Read more
Left to the wolves: Irish victims of Stalinist terror Barry McLoughlin (Irish Academic Press, hb e57.50, pb e29.50) ISBN 9780716529149, 9780716529157 One of the things the Soviets did well was compiling and preserving records, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberalisation of access to its archives some brilliant studies have appeared … Read more
Irish rural interiors in art Claudia Kinmonth (Yale University Press, e58.80) ISBN 9780300107326 Traditionally, most mainline historians have made little use of visual sources when analysing Ireland’s past. This began to change in the early 1990s. A number of publications, such as Raymond Gillespie and Brian Kennedy’s Ireland, art into history (Dublin, 1994), appeared that … Read more