Issue 1 (Spring 1997)

Unionism in Modern Ireland: new perspectives on politics and culture Richard English and Graham Walker (eds.) (Gill and Macmillan, £12.99) ISB: 0-7171-2465-7 Rethinking Unionism: an alternative vision for Ireland Norman Porter (Blackstaff, £10.

When I was a student in London in the late 1940s I was much impressed by Harold Laski’s love of Seeley’s dictum which he worked into nearly every lecture—‘History without politics has no fruit. Politics without history has no root’. So to read twenty years later the Irish revisionist historians was not so much a … Read more

Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State 1485-1725 Steven G. Ellis and Sarah Barber (eds.) (Longman, hb £36, pb £14.99) ISBN 0-5822-0964-1, 0-5822-0963-3

It is hardly more than twenty years since John Pocock first called for the creation of the ‘unknown subject’ (as he called it) of British History. Although the concept has not yet managed to penetrate to book shops (where shelves labelled ‘British History’ tend to be occupied by old-fashioned ‘popular’ histories of England). It is … Read more

Presbyterians and the Irish Language Roger Blaney (Ulster Historical Foundation/The Ultach Trust, £6.50) ISBN 0-901905-75-5

The events of last summer raised many questions about the nature and exercise of certain aspects of unionist cultural traditions in the North. Whilst historically it is the case that only a minority of the Protestant population there has, at any time, ever had actual membership of organisations such as the Orange Order, the Royal … Read more

Maynooth College: 1795-1995 Patrick J. Corish (Gill and Macmillan, £40) ISBN: 0-7171-2241-7

For the two centuries of its existence Maynooth has been close to the centre of Irish life and controversy. There is not a corner of the island which has not felt the effects of its alumni, or of decisions taken within its walls. Loved or viewed with suspicion, there is no seminary anywhere which has … Read more