BRENDAN BRADSHAW Ashgate £75 ISBN 9781472442567 Reviewed by Hiram Morgan This book is a collection of essays by Brendan Bradshaw, the well-known historian of Tudor Ireland and opponent of historical revisionism. Besides a number of new pieces, it includes reprints of the various essays and reviews in which he laid down his famous challenge to … Read more
MAURICE WALSH Faber and Faber £26 ISBN 9780571243006 Reviewed by Padraig Yeates This is probably the best overview of the revolutionary era in the current crop of books prompted by the ‘decade of centenaries’. It is superbly crafted and a joy to read. It is particularly suited to an international audience wishing to know more … Read more
Tom Burnell, Irishmen in the Great War: reports from the front 1914 (Pen & Sword Military, £19 hb, 252pp, ISBN 9781473821200). Turtle Bunbury, The glorious madness: tales of the Irish and the Great War (Gill & Macmillan, €29.99 pb, 338pp, ISBN 9780717162345). Gerard Fitzgibbon, Kingdom overthrown: Ireland and the battle for Europe, 1688–1691 (New Island … Read more
County Museum, Jocelyn Street, Dundalk dundalkmuseum.ie By Tony Canavan Dundalk has been quick off the mark in mounting the country’s first exhibition about the 1916 Rising, which was officially opened by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. Situated on the top floor of the museum, it is free to the public. The exhibition area is rectangular and you … Read more
W.B. Yeats: sex, death and the state of the nation By John Gibney Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats. While it might not have been a centenary, the immense stature of Yeats in the Irish literary tradition ensured that the anniversary became the ‘hook’ … Read more