Tony Canavan is an editorial consultant and member of the editorial board of History Ireland; David Edwards lectures in history at NUI, Cork; Thomas O’Loughlin lectures in theology at the University of Wales, Lampeter; C.D.C. Armstrong is a freelance historian.
Religion and Rebellion contains the proceedings of the twenty-second biennial Irish Conference of Historians, held in May 1995. The title is not an exact description of the contents. Only a few of the essays deal with ‘rebellion’ in the usual sense of the word: violent resistance to established authority. ‘Religion, rebellion, dissent, and social protest’ … Read more
While the title under review hints at a book of limited focus, suggesting a curious blend of archaeology and dilettante history, what we have is an in-depth study more comprehensive than any other work to date. It could be given several titles: ‘a social and economic history of Gaelic Ireland’; ‘law and society in early … Read more
The political writings of Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet, have long been familiar to students of Irish history. In particular, his 1596 treatise A Vewe of the Present State of Ireland has achieved a certain infamy for the violent attitudes it expressed towards the Irish, among whom Spenser had lived and worked for almost twenty … Read more
James Lydon has undertaken a daunting task in writing a history of Ireland from ancient times to the present. It is difficult to cover the broad sweep of history in any detail and too easy to include chronological description instead of analysis or explanation. Yet the author has risen to the challenge admirably and not … Read more