Landscapes of South Ulster Sir — I was more than surprised to read in Brian McDonald’s review of Landscapes of South Ulster (HI summer 1994) that included in Clogher diocese were ‘a single parish in south Donegal and…seven townlands of County Louth’. The volume itself is quite explicit in showing two Donegal parishes (Pettigo and … Read more
Noel Kissane (ed.) (Boyne Valley Honey Company, £9.95 PB) The appearance of this book is something of a milestone in the current revival of the fortunes of the National Library. The companion volume to an exhibition, it presents a beautifully-illustrated account of 100 items chosen by the Library’s various keepers as an example of the … Read more
Peter Collins (ed.) (Institute of Irish Studies, Belfast, £8.50) Peter Collins has put together a lively and engaging set of essays dealing with Nationalism and Unionism in Ireland in the period between 1885 and 1921. Brian Walker’s opening essay sets the tone admirably; the 1884 reform act democratised Ulster’s polity at the very moment when … Read more
Fr. Colman Ó Huallachain O.F.M. (Irish Franciscan Provincial Office, 1994, £10) Fr. Colman Ó Huallachain died in 1979, and the work of editing some of his best work on the Irish language fell firstly to his brother, the late Fr. Ronan Ó Huallachain O.F.M., and later to Fr. Patrick Conlan O.F.M. The resulting volume traces … Read more
Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, £35) ‘Ireland’, say Hadfield and Maley in one of the many rhetorical flourishes which enliven this collection, ‘was not a fixed, stable entity. It was a complex differentiated, heterogeneous and variegated text (their italics).’ In the wake of this ringing manifesto those anticipating the … Read more