By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr At 3.40am on 28 June 1922, the anti-Treaty IRA in the Four Courts were given an ultimatum to surrender by troops of the Provisional Government (increasingly referred to as the ‘National Army’) under the command of Michael Collins. When they refused, firing commenced twenty minutes later—the Irish Civil War had … Read more
ANNE BORAN Geography Publications €35 ISBN 9780906602973 Reviewed by John Cunningham John Cunningham lectures in History at NUI Galway. The subject of this biography was a mineworker and union leader in Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny. It is written by his daughter, who brings scholarly insights to the task drawn from a working life as a sociologist, … Read more
MÁIRE COMERFORD (ed. Hillary Dully) Lilliput Press €20 ISBN 9781843518198 Reviewed by Angus Mitchell Angus Mitchell was recently commissioned to write The Casement Memorial Statue for Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown County Council. If this book been published ten years earlier, how might it have influenced the history written during the ‘decade of centenaries’? At the … Read more
EVE MORRISON Irish Academic Press €19.95 ISBN 9781788551458 Reviewed by Gerry White Gerry White is a former member of the Defence Forces and the author of The burning of Cork (Mercier Press, 2006). On 28 November 1920, an IRA flying column led by Tom Barry ambushed a mobile patrol of Auxiliaries near Kilmichael in West … Read more
ROBIN FRAME Four Courts Press €55 ISBN 9781846827945 Reviewed by Simon Egan Simon Egan is Assistant Professor of Medieval Irish and British History at Trinity College, Dublin. Recent years have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in locating the development of English power in medieval Ireland within a broader comparative framework of interpretation. This approach, commonly … Read more