Students of the early modern period may be presented with a relatively straightforward history of Ireland’s sovereignty: the rapid military domination of a politically fragmented Gaelic polity by subjects of the king of England—beginning two decades or so after the pope’s grant of the island, by right of the so-called Donation of Constantine, to King … Read more
For Irish people the archetype of a fortified religious building is best encapsulated by the spectacular Augustinian priory at Kells, Co. Kilkenny (Pl. 1), the more ruinous but equally emotive remains of the Augustinian house at Athassel, Co. Tipperary, with its impressive defended gatehouse, or the dramatic fortified ruins of Lindisfarne priory on the Northumbrian … Read more
‘Schizophrenia of aspiration’? In his thought-provoking address to the Merriman Summer School recently, speculating on the possibility of Irish unity, former Stormont civil service mandarin Sir Kenneth Bloomfield remarked on the ‘schizophrenia of aspiration’ of newly independent Ireland. While aspiring to unity, the new state asserted its independence by policies that he described as ‘non-Britishness’, … Read more
Michael Davitt: freelance radical and frondeur Laurence Marley (Four Courts Press, €45) ISBN 9781846820663 Michael Davitt once took the sort of questionnaire that would now be found in a glossy magazine. We learn from it that his heroes were ‘those who minimise suffering’; his favourite food was ‘anything purchased by my own energy’; his favourite … Read more
The Irish Labour Party 1922–73 Niamh Puirseil (University College Dublin Press, €28) William O’Brien 1881–1968 Thomas J. Morrissey SJ (Four Courts Press, €55) In the introduction to her history of the Labour Party, Niamh Puirseil remarks that her subject ‘seems more than a little ashamed of its past’. This is true enough, though this reviewer … Read more