ROBIN BURY History Press of Ireland €18 ISBN 9781845888800 Reviewed by: Niall Meehan This survey of twentieth-century southern Protestant experience notes that it began badly for Protestant landlords. Their huge estates were subdivided for purchase by unappreciative, mainly Romanist, tenants. Then things went further downhill. Bury’s narrative asserts that IRA attacks on individual Protestants during … Read more
PRICILLA METSCHER Connolly Books €25 ISBN 9780993578502 Reviewed by: Emmet O’Connor Republicanism and socialism in Ireland is based on Priscilla Metscher’s Ph.D dissertation, completed at Bremen University in 1984. Even in 1984 it was an old-fashioned study, treading a path worn by W.P. Ryan, T.A. Jackson, Emil Strauss, Peter Beresford Ellis and others of the … Read more
ed. EC MARK WILLIAMS Princeton University Press $39.50 ISBN 9780691157313 Reviewed by: Angela Bourke Between Charles Stewart Parnell’s death in 1891 and the 1916 Rising, pre-Christian Ireland exercised a fascination that lies behind the present fact of Irish sovereignty. The years of cultural revival were saturated in the pagan past. Parents who broke with tradition … Read more
By Joe Culley James Kelly and Susan Hegarty (eds), Schools and schooling, 1650–2000: new perspectives on the history of education (Four Courts Press, €40.50 hb, 208pp, ISBN 9781846826283). Tony Bergin (hon. ed.), Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, Series 2, Vol. 16 (€10 pb, 200pp, ISBN 9780993428913). Kieran Groeger, The little book of … Read more
The Gallery, Farmleigh House, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8 www.phoenixpark.ie By Tony Canavan Residents of Dublin tend to take Phoenix Park for granted, never questioning its origins or why this prime piece of real estate has remained in public hands. Many would be surprised to learn that it started life as a royal deer-park for Charles … Read more