by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr The Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was born out of the struggle between the workers and the employers during the Lockout of 1913. A defence force had been mooted many times before the ICA was actually formed, and police brutality during previous strikes in Dublin, Cork and Wexford had convinced some … Read more
Ian Cobain (Portobello Books, £18.99) ISBN 9781846273339 Many years ago, when the UK prime minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, was eager to proclaim the British authenticity of the North of Ireland, she pronounced it to be ‘as British as Finchley’, her own constituency in England. She could as easily have said the same of … Read more
Mary Cullen (Arlen House, €25) ISBN 9780905223872 This book is a journey of discovery for both author and reader. Beginning with Maria Luddy’s dutiful summary of Cullen’s articles, we are introduced to Jane Austen’s views regarding history, which apparently consisted of ‘the quarrels of popes and kings . . . and hardly any women at … Read more
John Borgonovo (Cork University Press, €39) ISBN 9781909005822 After a slow start, local histories of the Irish revolution have multiplied over the past fifteen years, with monographs on Sligo, Longford, Limerick and Clare, as well as wider-ranging regional studies, chapters in the massive county volumes of interdisciplinary essays from Geography Publications, more or less ‘popular’ … Read more