One of the perils of editorial writing, especially in a bi-monthly magazine such as this, is the risk of giving hostages to fortune. By the time you read this, the context in which it is received might have been altered by a breaking news story. Thus in my last I opined that ‘… the Irish … Read more
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
DON O’LEARY Eryn Press €18.99 ISBN 9781788461641 Reviewed by Peter Boylan Peter Boylan is a former Master of the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin. Don O’Leary examines a range of contentious issues, from contraception and abortion to human embryonic stem cell research and assisted suicide, which have been, and continue to be, controversial. The focus … 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