NOEL DORR, Royal Irish Academy, €30, ISBN 9781-908997647 By Cillian McGrattan Cillian McGrattan lectures in Politics at the University of Ulster. Former Irish senior civil servant Noel Dorr revisits the increasingly well-furrowed ground of the Sunningdale period (1973–4) in this autobiography-cum-history. Although Dorr’s perspective on events was rather limited at the time owing to his … Read more
BY TONY CANAVAN Where and when did the War of Independence start? At Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary, 1919, I hear you say. Well, in Donegal they recently commemorated what they claim was the first action of the War of Independence. On 4 January 1918, an RIC party was bringing two republican prisoners from Kincasslagh to court … Read more
NIAMH HOWLIN, Four Courts Press, €55, ISBN 9781846826214 By Dean Jobb Dean Jobb teaches journalism and non-fiction writing at the University of King’s College in Nova Scotia. ‘In a case on which religious animosities prevailed,’ a member of parliament declared in 1824, he ‘would infinitely rather trust the life of a man to one of … Read more
FINTAN O’TOOLE Royal Irish Academy €30 ISBN 9781908997159 By Peter Gahan It’s about time that Ireland took Bernard Shaw seriously, and Fintan O’Toole in his convincingly argued and highly readable Judging Shaw makes a powerful case for so doing. Like Shaw a political commentator and drama critic (although Shaw was many other things, not least … Read more
By Eoin Dillon JAMES KELLY, Four Courts Press, €45, ISBN 9791846826399 Eoin Dillin is a scholar of twentieth-century African history. An extravagant generalisation: predominantly agrarian societies share some basic characteristics. Life is dependent on the vagaries of immediate food production and storage; the technology involved is basic and stable, knowledge accrued is experientially based, and … Read more