Reviews

Pathways to Ulster’s Past: Sources and Resources for Local Studies Peter Collins (Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s, £6.50) ISBN 0853896933

If you are exploring the labyrinthine pathways to Ulster’s past, you are likely to welcome the appearance of this guide by Peter Collins. It is a great boon to have the mysteries of the myriad records, and those of the archives, museums and libraries in which they repose, so comprehensively elucidated within the covers of … Read more

Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism & the Holocaust, Dermot Keogh. (Cork University Press, £15.99) ISBN 1859181503 Hitler’s Irish Voices: The Story of German Radio’s Wartime Irish Service David O’Donoghue (Beyond the Pale

Ireland’s relationship with the Third Reich is the common underlying theme for these engaging and well-  written books. Both illuminate issues glossed over by Carole J. Carter, J.P. Duggan, Robert Fisk and Enno Stephan. They have painstakingly reflected on and researched their respective topics using recently released Irish official records to expand the boundaries of … Read more

Politics and Irish Life, 1913-1921: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution, David Fitzpatrick. (Cork University Press, £14.95) ISBN 1859181740 The Two Irelands, 1912-1939, David Fitzpatrick. (Oxford University Press, £8.95) ISBN 019289240

It is a pleasure to note that David Fitzpatrick’s Politics and Irish Life is once more available, this time in paperback, twenty-two years after its original publication. That the book did not reach a wider circulation was due to a warehouse fire. But flames could not extinguish this fine work which has well stood the … Read more

Vol. 1: The Origins of Empire, Nicholas Canny (ed.). (Oxford University Press, £30) ISBN 0198205627 Vol. 2: The Eighteenth Century, Peter Marshall (ed.). (Oxford University Press, £30) ISBN 0198205635

The first two volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire survey ground last comprehensively covered in the Cambridge History of the British Empire, now over half a century old. As such they take their place among a growing number of attempts, ranging from the new Oxford History of England to the new Dictionary … Read more

Poetry and Politics: reaction & continuity in Irish poetry, 1558-1625, Marc Caball. (Cork University Press, £16.95) ISBN 1859181627

In her acclaimed introduction to the poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn, published in 1922, Eleanor Knott describes his attitude to the contemporary political scene in the following terms: He shows in most of his poems a calm acceptation of the contemporary strife, as though it were the natural order. Poetry flourished in it, and … Read more