‘I have been told the new policy and plan and I am satisfied, though I doubt its ultimate success in the main particular—the stamping out of terrorism by secret murder. I still am of opinion that instant retaliation is the only course for this . . .’ Sir, —Prof. David Fitzpatrick has performed a service … Read more
Jack Lynch: a biography Dermot Keogh (Gill and MacMillan, €26.99) ISBN 9780717134694 Jack Lynch died in 1999. Since then, he has received four biographies, more attention than has been given to any other recently deceased taoiseach. This has three causes. The first is what his latest chronicler, Dermot Keogh, describes as indignation at Lynch being … Read more
Tuned out: traditional music and identity in Northern Ireland Fintan Vallely (Cork University Press €39) ISBN 9781859184431 This book considers the attitudes of Protestant performers and of the broad Protestant community towards Irish traditional music in Northern Ireland. It also discusses how political attitudes have affected traditional music throughout Ireland and how they continue to … Read more
Sinn Féin and the politics of left republicanism Eoin Ó Broin (Pluto Press, €67.50 hb, €25 pb) ISBN 9780745324630, 978745324623Close observers of the politics of Irish historiography will have suspected that there was something odd about this book when it was reviewed prominently in the Irish Times, and commended by its resident revisionist, despite being … Read more
A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: democratic socialism and sectarianism Aaron Edwards (Manchester University Press, £60) ISBN 9780719078743This book is one of a series of Critical Labour Movement Studies, of which ten have already been published. Although there is a nod in the direction of mainland Europe with a book on Swedish social … Read more