The 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council strike and fears of British withdrawal. By Ian Wood The high drama of August 1969, with communal violence breaking out in Northern Ireland and a troubled Taoiseach Jack Lynch telling RTÉ viewers that the State ‘can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse’, has been … Read more
By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr. In 1920 the tone of the War of Independence changed drastically. The Dublin execution of an eighteen-year-old medical student, Kevin Barry, for killing a British soldier, the shooting of the lord mayor of Cork, Thomas MacCurtain, in front of his wife and children, and the arrest and death on hunger … Read more
MICHAEL HENEY Head of Zeus £16.99 ISBN 9781789545593 Reviewed by Thomas Leahy Thomas Leahy is the author of The intelligence war against the IRA (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and lectures on the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process at Cardiff University. Various authors have suggested that the Arms Crisis and subsequent trials were turning points … Read more
TOM O’DONOGHUE and TERESA O’DOHERTY Palgrave Macmillan €74.89 ISBN 9783030260200 Reviewed by Tony Lyons Dr Tony Lyons formerly lectured in Education History at Mary Imaculate College, University of Limerick. This book is something of a tour de force within the realms of the history of Irish education and schooling. It is an elucidating embrace of … Read more
DIANE URQUHART Cambridge University Press £22.99 ISBN 9781108717250 Reviewed by Mary Kenny Mary Kenny is a founder member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement and author of Goodbye to Catholic Ireland (New Island Books, 2000). Historically, there has seldom been any great ‘clamour’—as Professor Diane Urquhart puts it—for divorce in Ireland. Although the Brehon laws … Read more