GENERAL EOIN O’DUFFY: THE POLITICAL LIFE OF AN IRISH FIREBRAND

JACK TRAYNOR McFarland Books £49.71 ISBN 9781476693262 Reviewed By Brian Hanley Brian Hanley is the presenter of the ‘Dirty War in Dublin’ podcast, supported by a Royal Irish Academy Decade of Centenaries bursary. In December 1944 General Eoin O’Duffy, the former leader of Ireland’s best-known fascist movement, the Blueshirts, was buried with full military honours … Read more

WORKERS, POLITICS AND LABOUR RELATIONS IN INDEPENDENT IRELAND, 1922–46

GERARD HANLEY Four Courts Press €45 ISBN 9781801510783 Reviewed by Brian Girvin Brian Girvin is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow. Political independence promises much, but rarely delivers to the most disadvantaged sections in the new state. This certainly proved to be the case for the Irish working class and trade … Read more

MAGNATES AND MERCHANTS IN EARLY MODERN KILKENNY

JANE FENLON and SARAH MAGUIRE Four Courts Press €50 ISBN 9781801510899 Reviewed by Eoin Swithin Walsh Eoin Swithin Walsh is the author of Kilkenny: in times of revolution, 1900–1923 (Merrion Press, 2018). One of the significant successes of the ‘decade of centenaries’ has been the upsurge of interest in local histories. Knowing what happened in … Read more

Ohlmeyer, Making empire: Ireland, imperialism and the early modern world

JANE OHLMEYER Oxford University Press €43 ISBN 9780192867681 Reviewed by Hiram Morgan This is a significant survey of Ireland’s involvement in colonialism—both its own colonisation by the English and Scots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and its ubiquitous role in the British and other European empires into the mid-eighteenth century and beyond. Fast-moving, richly … Read more