Volume 25

SALVADOR RYAN (ed.) Wordwell Books €25 ISBN 9780993351822 Reviewed by: John McCafferty Professor John McCafferty is Director of the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, UCD. As Catholicism continues its long decline in Ireland and political discourse around the future shape of the island keeps changing, many people find themselves having to find fresh markers of identity … Read more

ANDREW TIERNEY Penguin Ireland £14.99 ISBN 9781844883929 Reviewed by: Dean Jobb Dean Jobb, author of Empire of deception, teaches non-fiction writing at the University of King’s College, Nova Scotia. It was a single death among hundreds in famine-ravaged County Tipperary in the spring of 1849. Ellen Langley, wife of Dr Charles Langley of Nenagh, died … Read more

LIAM MURPHY Kingdom Books €20 ISBN 9780952456780 Reviewed by: Dáire Keogh Prof. Dáire Keogh is Deputy President of Dublin City University. There was a tendency in the older historiography to see the Penal Age as an era of uniform and unrelenting persecution, stretching from the hollow Treaty of Limerick to the Liberator’s great victory in … Read more

MARGARET URWIN Mercier Press €13.49 ISBN 9781781174623 Reviewed by: Raymond Murray This is the third scholarly book in recent times that shows how successive British governments abandoned morality and law in dealing with conflict in Northern Ireland. Published in 2012, Ian Cobain’s Cruel Britannia: a secret history of torture reveals how the British government over … Read more