REMEMBERING THE TROUBLES Contesting the recent past in Northern Ireland

JIM SMYTH (ed.) University of Notre Dame Press $40 ISBN 9780268101749 Reviewed by: Brian Hanley Brian Hanley is an Irish History Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. This book is a welcome reminder that it is possible for historians writing about Ireland’s long war to be fair-minded, even-handed and empathetic. In that alone it … Read more

BOMBS, BULLETS AND THE BORDER Policing Ireland’s frontier: Irish security policy, 1969–1978

PATRICK MULROE Irish Academic Press €24.99 ISBN 9781911024521 Reviewed by: Deaglán de Bréadún Deaglán de Bréadún is the author of Power play: the rise of modern Sinn Féin (Irish Academic Press, 2015). Patrick Mulroe has performed a very useful public service in this book of almost 300 pages by chronicling and analysing the approach of … Read more

MESSINES TO CARRICK HILL: writing home from the Great War

TOM BURKE Mercier Press €17.99 ISBN 9781781174845 Reviewed by: Patrick Callan Patrick Callan is a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin. Michael Wall enlisted in January 1916 as a second lieutenant in the Royal Irish Regiment. A nineteen-year-old officer, he died during the Battle of Messines in June … Read more