Kate Newmann (Institute of Irish Studies, Belfast, £9.50) There have been many occasions when I have sought enlightenment on an individual whose name may have been familiar but of whose achievements I knew little. It is gratifying to have recourse to a volume such as The Dictionary of National Biography or Chambers’ Biographical Dictionary and … Read more
Mary Harris (Cork University Press, £32) This scholarly and handsomely produced volume fills a surprising void in twentieth-century Irish history. It might have been expected that the role of the Catholic Church and the foundation of Northern Ireland would already have become the subject of intense research. Yet Mary Harris is the first historian to … Read more
Owen Dudley Edwards (Mercat Press, £9.95) This is the second edition of Owen Dudley Edwards’ compelling account of the lives of the infamous Irishmen accused of supplying involuntary donors for the anatomist’s table. The author’s note dryly observes that ‘he too is an Irish Catholic making a contribution to higher learning in Edinburgh’. One might … Read more
On 22 October 1641 the native Irish of Ulster, led by Sir Phelim O’Neill, captured a number of key towns and fortifications in the province. An alliance was soon forged with the old English Catholics of the Pale and by the end of the year the revolt had spread throughout the country. After an initial … Read more
The past decade has witnessed a greater awareness amongst historians of late medieval and early modern Ireland of the importance of bardic poetry in the analysis of intellectual trends amongst the Gaelic elite. The estimated total of some 2,000 extant poems constitutes the most extensive body of evidence left to historians by the Gaelic polity. … Read more