Issue 2 (Summer 1996)

A Century of Northern Life: The Irish News and 100 Years of Ulster History 1890s-1990s, Eamon Phoenix (ed.), (Ulster Historical Foundation, £10 .95). A History of The Belfast Telegraph, Malcolm Brodie, (Blackstaff Press, £14.99).

Both these books were commissioned and, like the newspapers they serve to commemorate, they are different in orientation. The one dedicated to The Irish News is a collection of twenty-six articles by academics, journalists and writers to honour its centenary in 1991, to pay tribute to the skill, courage and objectivity of its journalists during … Read more

The politics of Irish education, 1920-65, Sean Farren, (Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, £16.50)

This is a thought provoking study. Sean Farren provides us not only with an insight into developments in the schools in both Northern Ireland and the Free State/Republic of Ireland, but shows the extent to which the schools were used by political and church powers to cultivate a particular, one-dimensional type of nationality, culture and … Read more

Enduring the most: the life of Terence MacSwiney, Francis J. Costello. (Brandon, £9.99)

The name of Terence MacSwiney (1879-1920), the Lord Mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in Brixton prison during the War of Independence, is familiar not only in Ireland but in countries where anti-colonial movements praised his example. Despite his fame, and the continuing resonance of the hunger strike in Irish political culture, there … Read more

Graziers, Land Reform and Political Conflict in Ireland David S. Jones (Catholic University of America Press, £40.50)

In 1978 David Seth Jones completed his PhD, ‘Agrarian capitalism and rural social development in Ireland’, at Queen’s University, Belfast. Since then every serious scholar of modern Ireland has been in his debt. At times a slightly dry work—partly because so much of the evidence is drawn from official enquiries and reports—Jones’ thesis, nonetheless, stated … Read more

Ireland in the Stuart Papers (2 vols.), Patrick Fagan (ed.), (Four Courts Press £40).

Fagan’s edition of letters of Irish interest in the Stuart papers makes available an important collection of primary source-material relating to Ireland and the exiled Stuarts. It reflects the burgeoning of interest in Irish Jacobitism as represented by the work of Breandán Ó Buachalla, Mícheal Mac Craith, Vincent Morley, Patrick Fagan and my own ongoing … Read more