Volume 9

Rebellion and Remembrance in Modern Ireland, Laurence M. Geary (ed.). (Four Courts Press, £35.44) ISBN 185182586X Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union: Ireland in the 1790s, Jim Smyth (ed.). (Cambridge University Press, £35) ISBN 052166109

As the Irish parliament enacts the union a deputation of dissident MPs burst into the study of Robert Emmet, demanding that he go immediately to France in search of armed assistance. Elsewhere Father Murphy organises his parishioners into an insurrectionary band. Later Michael Dwyer marries Anne Devlin, before both flee to Australia. These self-evidently ludicrous … Read more

The Two Patricks: RTÉ’s Lost Among Wolves & Fanatic Heart

Two recent TV documentaries on Irish revolutionaries, both in RTÉ’s True Lives series, offer a strikingly contrasting view of the lives of two men caught up in the politics of the twentieth century. Patrick Pearse and Pat Breslin—the former firmly established in the pantheon of Irish nationalism, the latter virtually forgotten except by his children … Read more

Peter Berry’s ‘Notes’ on subversion in the ‘30s & ‘40s

The recent revelation that Peter Berry, secretary to the Department of Justice, highlighted key sections of a document that were subsequently deleted, a document central to the 1970 Arms Trial, is not the first time that his name has been linked to sensitive documents relating to matters of state security. The Sean MacEntee Papers, held … Read more

The Casement ‘Black Diaries’ Debate: the story so far

Following the publication, in October 1997, of two versions of diary material relating to Roger Casement’s activities in the Amazon in 1910, there resurfaced one of the longest running controversies in Anglo-Irish relations: the dispute over the authenticity of the Alleged Casement Diaries or so-called Black Diaries as they are more popularly known. Since Casement’s … Read more