On 27 April 1923 de Valera and Aiken published peace proposals to end the civil war: all arms should be under control of the executive government responsible to the people through their elected representatives. They insisted that all arms would have to be surrendered. Nevertheless when Fianna Fáil came back into constitutional politics, albeit as … Read more
Just over seventy years ago in the early evening of 22 August 1922 a car stopped at Newcestown church County Cork and its principal passenger wandered alone in the churchyard. Then driver and passenger set off north-eastwards and turned left at Quarry Cross to take the road to Bealnablath and then on to Cork. The … Read more
But such is Collins’ continued celebrity that images of him are not confined to the illustrative plates of biographies and histories relating to his life and times. If one wanders along Westmoreland Street or Stephen’s Green in Dublin it is possible to buy reproductions of some of the more famous photo-journalism of the revolutionary period. … Read more
H. Gustav Klaus (ed.) (O’Brien Press, £15.99) 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 approach belied by the contents. This is a book that will enchant, inform, anger and frustrate, as much as the events … Read more
Jeremy Williams (Irish Academic Press, £35) 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 house. Jeremy Williams A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921 … Read more