Gerardine Meaney lectures in English at UCD; Kevin Whelan is the RIA Bicentennial Scholar; Jim Smyth lectures in sociology at Queen’s, Belfast; Caitríona Clear lectures in history at UCG; and Mary Harris lectures in history at Queen’s, Belfast.
P. Bew, K. Darwin and G. Gillespie (eds.) (Institute of Irish Studies, Belfast, £6.50) Community relations initiatives in Northern Ireland have been accorded such significance in recent years that one commentator has referred to the ‘fetishisation of talking’. Passion and Prejudice reminds us that in previous years dialogue was more problematic. It presents the background … Read more
D. G. Boyce, R. Eccleshall and V. Geogheghan (eds.) (Routledge, £40, £25 in Ireland) Niche marketing is no longer confined to fancy automobiles and exotic salad dressings but is part and parcel of the post-Thatcherite academic industry. The increasingly ramshackle knowledge industry has developed a complex hierarchy identified more by image than content. Within the … Read more
Tom Power (Clarendon, £40) Tipperary has been a hot county in terms of recent Irish history writing. The acknowledged epicentre of agrarian disturbance, the county’s fearsome reputation in the early nineteenth century and the subsequent wave of transportation added a new verb to the English language: administrators were afraid that these convicts would ‘Tipperaryify’ Australia. … Read more
R.F. Foster (Penguin, £22.50) While Paddy and Mr Punch is a collection of essays, not a general history, it nonetheless maps out the central preoccupations of a highly influential historian and sets out to analyse the past and current state of relations between ‘History and the Irish Question’. Foster welcomes the possibilities offered by an … Read more