Reviews

Rethinking Irish History: Nationalism, Identity and Ideology Patrick O’Mahony and Gerard Delanty (Macmillan Press, £45) ISBN0333627970 The Geopolitics of Anglo-Irish Relations in the 20th Century, G.R. Sloan. (Leicester University Press, £45)

Both these books contain stern critiques of twentieth-century Irish nationalism, which has underpinned the creation of a sovereign twenty-six-county Republic. They represent interdisciplinary forays into history by on the one hand two sociologists from Cork and Belfast and on the other by a British defence specialist with rather mixed results. Rethinking Irish History represents the … Read more

The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society 1848-82, R.V. Comerford. (Wolfhound Press, £14.99) ISBN 086327627X Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press 1850-1892 Marie-Louise Legg (Four Courts Press, £32.99) ISBN 185182341

R.V. Comerford’s The Fenians in Context, re-issued in paperback after thirteen years, has not aged gracefully. To revisit it is to be reminded of a particularly complacent moment in 1980s historical revisionism, then at its peak. By 1988 Comerford’s arguments were still sufficiently state-of-the-art to be incorporated wholesale into the relevant section of R.F. Foster’s … Read more

The writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763-98, Volume I, Tone’s career in Ireland to June 1795, T.W. Moody, R.B. McDowell and C.J. Woods (eds.). (Clarendon Press, £80) ISBN 0198223838.

Theobald Wolfe Tone (TWT) was born in 1763 and died in 1798. In 1963 the late Theodore William Moody (TWM) projected a definitive scholarly edition of TWT’s writings and in 1998 the first of three volumes reached the book shops. Tone, in other words, managed to pack three volumes-worth into his short life. Evidently the … Read more

The Williamite War in Ireland, 1688-1691, Richard Doherty (Four Courts Press, 1998, £40.00 hb, £14.95 pb) ISBN 1851823743, 1851823751

The war between William and James, though of relatively short duration, was fought on a scale unsurpassed in Irish history: there were 60,000 men at the Boyne, more than 40,000 at Aughrim. In recent years, the war has received much attention from historians whose works we can now add to Demetrius Boulger’s time-honoured Battle of … Read more

The Ancient World of the Celts, Peter Berresford Ellis. (Constable, £25) ISBN 0094787204 Ancient Ireland: Life Before the Celts, Laurence Flanagan. (Gill and Macmillan, £16.99) ISBN 0717124347

Those of us who desire to know about the past are served by many people and groups: researchers, teachers, writers, and not least by publishers—without whom the thoughts of historians would be limited to their classrooms. And it is as a reflection on this group, and how they serve us, that I have chosen to … Read more