Reviews

History in Residence

Newstalk 106:https://www.newstalk.com/documentary-and-drama-on-newstalk/history-residence-documentary-newstalk-947108 The Emergency: creative freedom in wartime Dublin BBC Radio 3: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000djfh 19 January 2020   By John Gibney Coincidentally, on Sunday 19 January two different radio stations broadcast two very different documentaries on the history of Dublin. One notable aspect of the ongoing ‘decade of centenaries’ has been the degree of public interest … Read more

MUSEUM EYE: From Turmoil to Truce—photographs of the War of Independence

National Photographic Archive, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar nli.ie By Tony Canavan This exhibition explores aspects of the Irish War of Independence through photographs from the National Library’s collections with an accompanying programme of discussions, events and tours. The exhibition makes good use of the limited space in the Meeting House Square gallery and hardly … Read more

Hitler: only the world was enough

BRENDAN SIMMS Allen Lane £30 ISBN 9781846142475 Reviewed by Geoffrey Roberts If you are going to challenge a cherished historical consensus you need cogent arguments and compelling evidence. Brendan Simms’s challenge to deeply entrenched interpretations of Hitler’s Weltanschauung is plausible and engaging but unconvincing. According to Simms, ‘Hitler’s principal preoccupation throughout his career was Anglo-America … Read more

IRISH LIBERTY, BRITISH DEMOCRACY: the third Irish Home Rule crisis, 1909–1914

JAMES DOHERTY Cork University Press €39 ISBN 9781782053606 Reviewed by Martin O’Donoghue Martin O’Donoghue is a lecturer in Irish and British history at Northumbria University. In 1935 George Dangerfield published The strange death of Liberal England—an attractive volume that explained the collapse of the Liberal Party in terms of major pre-war factors: the Conservative campaign … Read more

‘AN ALIEN IDEOLOGY’: Cold War perceptions of the Irish republican left

JOHN MULQUEEN Liverpool University Press £75 ISBN 9781789620641 Reviewed by Ruan O’Donnell Ruan O’Donnell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Limerick. Given their centrality to matters pertaining to the recent ‘Long War’ and the burgeoning bibliography of that expansive topic, it is surprising how little has been published on the role of … Read more