Jean Manco Thames & Hudson £19.94 ISBN 9780500051788 ‘It is a tangled web our ancestors have woven’, Jean Manco writes. ‘For the general public the new views may not fit treasured national myths.’ The interplay between research agendas and politics is always fraught, especially when the topic is identity. Language barriers and nationalist ideology have … Read more
Darren McGettigan Four Courts Press £17.50 ISBN 9781846823848 This is an example of an expert book written by a self-confessed non-expert—and it is a resounding success. Darren McGettigan’s previous work has been focused firmly on the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the world of Red Hugh O’Donnell and the Donegal plantation. In a major departure … Read more
Seán Duffy Gill and Macmillan £24.99 ISBN 9780717157785 Forty-two years have passed since Gill and Macmillan, in what became a celebrated series of history books, enabled Donnchadh Ó Corráin to write that Clontarf ‘was not a struggle between the Irish and the Norse for the sovereignty of Ireland’ but rather a revolt of the Leinstermen … Read more
A supplement to the Dictionary of Scandinavian words in the languages of Britain and Ireland (Four Courts Press, ?29.95 hb, 128pp, ISBN 9781846823800). Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland: essays in honour of Katharine Simms (Four Courts Press, ?55 hb, 600pp, ISBN 9781846822803). The friars in Ireland, 1224–1540 Four Courts Press, ?29.95 pb, 432pp, … Read more
Clontarf 1014: Brian Boru and the battle for Dublin National Museum of Ireland Kildare Street, Dublin 2 www.museum.ie By Tony Canavan This major exhibition to mark the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf features artefacts, information panels, artist’s representations of the warriors involved, maps and so on. The artefacts and illustrations are divided thematically. A … Read more