BARRY KEANE Mercier Press £19.99 ISBN 9781781172032 The killing of thirteen Protestants in West Cork in April 1922—the ‘Ballygorman and Dunmanway massacre’—is one of the most disputed incidents in modern Irish history. On 26 April 1922, Michael O’Neill (a local IRA man) was shot dead by Herbert Woods during an arms raid on the farm … Read more
ANGUS MITCHELL O’Brien Press £13.85 ISBN 9781847172648 Amongst the sixteen men executed after the 1916 Rising, the one whose role is most difficult to evaluate is Roger Casement. He comes across as a quixotic figure on the revolutionary margins, his importance and achievements overshadowed by controversy about the authenticity of records of his sex life … Read more
RAY BATESON Irish Graves Publications £17.50 ISBN 9780954227531 If Ray Bateson was lucky enough to be a tenured professor of modern Irish history with an army of research students chomping at the bit for a mention in the credits of one of his books one can only imagine the output he might achieve. He has … Read more
SENIA PASˇETA Cambridge University Press £60 ISBN 9781107047747 Much work has been done on nationalist women in the early twentieth century. Beginning in 1922 with Helena Concannon’s Daughters of Banba, this is a much-tilled field that has attracted scholars from Ireland, Britain, France, Australia, Finland, the United States and New Zealand. Maire O’Neill, with biographies … Read more
DERMOT MELEADY Merrion £26.50 ISBN 9781908928313 REVIEWED BY PATRICK MAUME Jessica Cunningham’s 2012 Hugh Lane Gallery lecture on the visual culture of Home Rule displayed three contemporary images of John Redmond. The second and most prominent, dating from his post-1900 leadership of the Irish Party, is familiar in standard narratives of twentieth-century Irish history: a … Read more