ROBERT McLAUGHLIN University of Toronto Press CAN$29.95 ISBN 9781442610972 Any book on the Irish that begins with the 1998 peace talks in the North and ends with a reminder about Orange gunrunning during the Troubles is bound to fall into cliché. Robert McLaughlin’s Irish Canadian conflict and the struggle for Irish independence, 1912–1925 is no … Read more
MICHAEL LAFFAN Royal Irish Academy €30 ISBN 9781908996398 A Dublin Opinion cartoon introduces a just-retired William T. Cosgrave to ‘History’ in 1944. Yet it has taken 70 years for the image of the head of the first government of Ireland to re-emerge into the public consciousness. This, the first complete biography by an academic, provides … Read more
ANDREW CARPENTER (general ed.) Yale University Press for the Royal Irish Academy Full set €475, single volumes €95 each ISBNs: 9780300179194 (Medieval) 9780300179200 (Painting) 9780300179217 (Sculpture) 9780300179224 (Architecture) 9780300179231 (Twentieth Century) Reviewed by Peter Harbison The biggest book event of 2014 must surely have been the publication in November of the superb five-volume Art and … Read more
Angélique Day, Glimpses of Ireland’s past: the Ordnance Survey memoir drawings: topography and technique (Royal Irish Academy, €30 pb, 350pp, ISBN 9781908996459). Garret Fitzgerald, Irish primary education in the early nineteenth century: an analysis of the first and second reports of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 1825–6 (Royal Irish Academy, €35 hb, 180pp, ISBN … Read more
Town Hall, the Castle, Bangor, Co. Down www.northdownmuseum.com museum@northdown.gov.uk North Down Museum recently celebrated its 30th year and it is one of the most successful local museums in Ireland. It is historic in itself, being situated in converted outbuildings of Bangor Castle. The museum covers a number of themes on the history and heritage of … Read more