By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr The Civil War was the lowest point in recent Irish history. Few wars are as bitter as civil wars; few civil wars were as bitter as the Irish Civil War. Its brutality was horrifying, and the tactics of both sides did no justice to the causes for which they fought. … Read more
JULIE KAVANAGH Grove Press £18.99 ISBN 9781611856415 Reviewed by Barry Walsh Barry Walsh is a solicitor and a former Policy Adviser at the Department of An Taoiseach. The final decades of British rule in Ireland have been examined by many British authors in the last century, often with mixed results. The works of Charles Townshend, … Read more
SHERRA MURPHY Cork University Press €39 ISBN 9781782054559 Reviewed by Tony Canavan Tony Canavan is Consultant Editor of Books Ireland. Ireland’s Natural History Museum—or the ‘Dead Zoo’, as it is called in popular tradition—is well known to most Irish people, from school visits if nothing else. In this interesting book, Sherra Murphy traces the history … Read more
STEVEN ELLIS Boydell £75 ISBN 9781783276608 Reviewed by Ruth Canning Ruth Canning is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Liverpool Hope University. Ireland’s English Pale is a region frequently discussed but very rarely defined. James Lydon’s 1967 article, ‘The problem of the frontier in medieval Ireland’, had, it seemed, settled the issue for many … Read more
ROBERT DEVOY, VAL CUMMIN, BARRY BRUNT, DARIUS BARTLETT and SARAH KANDROT (eds) Cork University Press €59 ISBN 9781782054511 Reviewed by David Murphy The late John de Courcy Ireland (d. 2006), the Irish maritime historian, often lamented the fact that, despite being an island nation, we had seemingly turned our back on the sea. In his … Read more