James Kelly (Four Courts Press) ISBN 1851826114 In editing sixty-two broadside gallows speeches from eighteenth century Ireland James Kelly finds himself in the company of another prolific commentator on eighteenth-century Ireland. According to the nineteenth-century antiquarian Thomas Crofton-Croker, Jonathan Swift collected and annotated printed dying speeches of Irish victims. The history of crime and punishment … Read more
Nicholas Canny (Oxford University Press, £55) ISBN 0198200919 In 1976 Nicholas Canny set the agenda for a generation of scholars of early modern Ireland with The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: a pattern established, 1565-76. He now presents us with a major study of the colonisation of Ireland in the turbulent years that followed. It is … Read more
Last April’s conference of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland at the University of Southampton, whose theme was chosen to reflect the centenary of Queen Victoria’s death, opened with a classic rendition of the music hall ditty ‘Killaloe’, written by Robert Martin, landowner, unionist and composer of popular songs and musicals. Music hall … Read more
The idea of holding a world congress of the ‘Irish race’ originated with the Irish Republican Association of South Africa in February 1921. Preliminary work was undertaken by Art O’Brien of the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain, and Robert Brennan, under-secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Second Dáil cabinet. It was … Read more
In 1900 the council of the Royal Dublin Society proposed that a monument be raised to Queen Victoria within the precincts of the its grounds at Leinster House. At a time of growing nationalist support, the statue was to provide a focus for those Irish loyal to the queen. The sculptor chosen for this prestigious … Read more