By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr Though the Home Rule Bill of 1886 met with fierce opposition, it was Parnell’s affair with the married Katharine O’Shea that was fatal to his leadership and, ultimately, to Home Rule in his time. His refusal to step down after Mrs O’Shea’s sensational divorce case produced bitter division. Meetings … Read more
BARRY KENNERK (ed.) Ashbourne Historical Society €20 ISBN 9781527254633 Reviewed by Stephen Doyle Stephen Doyle is a history graduate of University College Dublin. In his hilariously tongue-in-cheek 1967 article, ‘How Not to Write Local History’, H.P.R. Finberg notes two main problems: first, the tendency among ‘accomplished bunglers’ to eschew referencing and, second, their disastrous foreshortening … Read more
GILLIAN O’BRIEN Doubleday €16.99 ISBN 9781781620502 Reviewed by John Gibney John Gibney is Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy series. Gillian O’Brien’s new book could be described as a travelogue of Ireland’s ‘dark tourism’—those sites associated with the titular famine, death and rebellion, explored here by the author with … Read more
ALEXANDER O’HARA Oxford University Press €62.65 ISBN 9780190858001 Reviewed by Meredith Cutrer Meredith Cutrer is a Ph.D student in University College Dublin’s School of History. Whether one loves him or hates him, few will disagree that the Irish monk Columbanus was remarkable. At once an unyielding ascetic, a provocative firebrand, an indefatigable monastic founder, an … Read more
MARIA LUDDY and MARY O’DOWD Cambridge University Press £74.99 ISBN 9781108731904 Reviewed by Mary Kenny It was said that a traditional Irish marriage proposal was ‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’, which was thought both comical and macabre. If ever such a proposal was made, however, it did underline quite shrewdly the … Read more