Reviewed by Adrian Kelly 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 … Read more
Reviewed by Patrick Maume 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 … Read more
Reviewed by Paul Bew 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 … Read more
Reviewed by Éamonn Ó Ciardha 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 … Read more
Reviewed by Donal O’Carroll In their preface to this handsome volume the joint editors acknowledge that while it has been their aim to give some account of the chief battles of Ireland’s history their principal concern is with the political and social background. Although at first sight this might appear to belie the title … Read more