August 2018 marked the 73rd anniversary of the ushering in of the nuclear age, with the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (on the 6th) and Nagasaki (on the 9th). Within twenty years all five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, USSR, UK, France and China) were nuclear-armed, with … Read more
EDWARD BURKE Liverpool University Press £85 ISBN 9781786940971 Reviewed by Colin Wallace Colin Wallace was Senior Information Officer (Psychological Operations) at British Army headquarters in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1975. One message remains clearly fixed in my mind from my earliest experiences of the British Army more than 50 years ago: ‘There are no … Read more
CONNAL PARR Oxford University Press £55 ISBN 9780198791591 Reviewed by Henry Patterson Henry Patterson is Professor Emeritus of Irish Politics at Ulster University. Connal Parr has written a cultural and sociological history of the Ulster Protestant community from the Home Rule period to the Peace Process focusing on the work of ten writers, the majority … Read more
WILLIAM JENKINS McGill/Queen’s University Press $99CAD ISBN 9780773550469 Reviewed by Dean Jobb Dean Jobb teaches non-fiction writing at the University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. One was dubbed the ‘Belfast of Canada’, the other the ‘Queen City of the Lakes’. Toronto, capital of the Canadian province of Ontario and bordering the Great Lake of … Read more
BRENDAN SMITH (ed.) Cambridge University Press £100 ISBN 9781107110670 Reviewed by Seán Duffy When Oxford University Press’s nine-volume New History of Ireland was announced in 1968, few can have imagined that it would take 37 years to bring it to completion, though in most respects it was worth the wait: in its day, it merited … Read more