McDowell on McDowell: a memoir R. B. McDowell (The Lilliput Press, €20) ISBN 9781843511335 The wonderful French lady who owns Terroirs wine merchants in Dublin once described a wine to me as ‘like an old man getting out of bed in the morning’. Though sceptical of this (and slightly repelled), having drunk the wine I … Read more
That neutral island: a cultural history of Ireland during the Second World War Clair Wills (Faber & Faber, €20) ISBN 9780571234479 Clair Wills’s work integrates two different approaches to history: one focusing on diplomacy and politics, the other on culture and society. She attempts to reverse the trend of concentrating on specific areas of Ireland … Read more
Redmond the Parnellite Dermot Meleady (Cork University Press, €43.20) ISBN 9781859184233 In the tumult of 1916 and the War of Independence, it is easy to forget that an agreement had already been made to give Ireland autonomy over its own affairs. The role played by John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and … Read more
Ariadne’s thread: writing women into Irish history Margaret MacCurtain (Arlen House, €25) ISBN 9781903631423 Like the Venerable Bede, the seventh-century Jarrow monk and ‘father of English history’, Margaret MacCurtain (a.k.a. Sister Ben to thousands of University College Dublin graduates) serenely glides over the troubled waters of Irish historiography opening up new fields, which flower in … Read more
Remembering the Year of the French: Irish folk history and social memory Guy Beiner (University of Wisconsin Press, $49.95) ISBN 9780299218201 The Irish Folklore Commission, 1935–1970 Micheál Briody (Helsinki: Studia Fennica, €37.69) ISBN 9517469470 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising Mary E. Daly and Margaret O’Callaghan (eds) (Royal Irish Academy, €35) ISBN 9781904890270 Like … Read more