Strong Words, Brave Deeds: the poetry, life and times of Thomas O’Brien, volunteer in the Spanish Civil War H. Gustav Klaus (ed.)(O’Brien Press, £15.99) Reviewed by Willy Maley This is several books rolled into one—biography, letters, poems, plays, and essays, the whole project ‘illustrated with historic photographs, documents and ephemera’. The title suggests a simplistic … Read more
A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921 Jeremy Williams(Irish Academic Press, £35) Reviewed by Christine Casey In his foreword to this book Mark Girouard recalls schoolboy holidays in Ireland and a youthful appreciation of Irish nineteenth-century classicism gained through the seat of his trousers on sliding down the staircase balustrade of an aunt’s Greek-revival … Read more
Landlords and tenants in mid-Victorian Ireland W.E. Vaughan (Clarendon Press, £40) Reviewed by Clare Murphy This scholarly work is the result of long, methodical research based on an impressive range of primary sources, most notably estate papers. It is delivered free from irritating jargon with the econometric analysis lightened by a varied array of anecdotal … Read more
Aristocrats Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740-1832 Stella Tillyard (Chatto and Windus, £20) Reviewed by Eleanor Burgess Aristocrats is a tour de force. Stella Tillyard has used the stories of the four sisters of its subtitle, largely taken from their copious correspondence, to immerse the reader in the eighteenth century on both sides of … Read more
The Chief Governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland, 1536-1588Ciaran Brady(Cambridge University Press, £35) Anglicising the government of Ireland: the Irish privy council and the expansion of Tudor rule, 1556-78Jon Crawford(Irish Academic Press, £37.50) Sixteenth-century Ireland: the incomplete conquestColm Lennon(Gill & MacMillan, £14.99) Reviewed by Hiram Morgan Brady’s Chief Governors is … Read more