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