BRIAN HANLEY Manchester University Press £80/€93.75 ISBN 9780719091131 Reviewed by: Martin Mansergh Martin Mansergh is a former government adviser and politician. One of the most natural human tendencies is to try and sanitise narratives of the past, to smooth over the jagged edges, the mistaken actions and judgements, and, if possible, to cover them with … Read more
KARINA HOLTON Four Courts Press €49 ISBN 9781846827051 Reviewed by: Sylvie Kleinman Sylvie Kleinman has worked for the Dictionary of Irish Biography. This book makes the compelling case that Valentine Lawless, second Baron Cloncurry, was ‘second only to the [3rd] Duke of Leinster’ among high-ranking Liberal Protestants during the first half of the nineteenth century. … Read more
GERARD MURPHY The Collins Press €19.99 ISBN 9781848893375 Reviewed by: Nigel Jones Nigel Jones is a former editor of History Today and BBC History Magazine. The fatal shooting of Michael Collins in his own Cork countryside not only deprived Ireland of its most dynamic, gifted and charismatic leader but also left an enduring mystery. Was … Read more
THOMAS BARTLETT (ed.) Cambridge University Press €140/£100 ISBN 9781107113541 Reviewed by: Brian Hanley This volume of the Cambridge History of Ireland sets out to tell the story of Ireland from 1880 to the present day. Editor Thomas Bartlett has argued that such a project was ‘badly needed’, not because of a dearth of scholarship on modern … Read more
Directed by Mike Leigh By Eoin Dillon Mike Leigh’s film Peterloo deals with events in St Peter’s Field in Manchester on 16 August 1819, when between 60,000 and 100,000 organised and disciplined workers, both men and women, from town and field, assembled peacefully to demand parliamentary reform and were sabred down—with perhaps fifteen dead and … Read more