The Wandering Liberator

On St Patrick’s Day 2001, Bob McLean delivered a lecture in Edinburgh’s City Art Centre on Daniel O’Connell. It accompanied an exhibition of paintings belonging to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBOS), including a magnificent portrait of the Liberator. With the painting as an imposing backdrop, the lecture detailed for a Scottish audience O’Connell’s significance … Read more

The Irish in Europe, 1580-1815, Thomas O’Connor (ed.). (Four Courts Press, £35.44) ISBN 1851825797 La emigración irlandesa en siglo xviii [Irish emigration in the eighteenth century] María Begoña Villar García (ed.) (Universidad de Málaga) I

These two collections of essays expand on works such as Micheline Kerney-Walsh’s An exile of Ireland, Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Ulster, emphasising that there was much more to Irish continental migration than dispossessed aristocracy and unemployed soldiery looking to new horizons. Both books also hint at a great deal of research waiting to be done … Read more

Die Beziehungen zwischen Spanien und Irland im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Diplomatie, Handel und die soziale Integration katholischer Exulanten, [The Relationship between Spain and Ireland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries: the diplomacy,

For the last fifteen years ‘confessionalisation’ has been one of the most prominent concepts in German scholarship on early modern Europe. In the wake of the methodological approaches of Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard concerning the role of religion in social change and state formation scholars have explored the impact of confessionalisation both on German … Read more

Irlanda y el rey prudente, [Ireland and the Prudent King], Enrique García Hernán. (Ediciones del Laberinto, Madrid, 2,000 pesetas) ISBN 8487482686

Those who read Spanish will find Enrique García’s book both rewarding and interesting. For too long Ireland’s relations with Philip II have centred on the ‘invincible armada’ of 1588. As this book shows, the king was continuously interested in Ireland during his time as monarch, 1556-98. Indeed, this comprehensiveness is the main feature of this … Read more

Kinsale: the Motion Picture

RTÉ has made a documentary, The Battle of Kinsale, as its contribution of this year’s 400th commemoration of that event. History Ireland solicited the views of the programme makers. Peter Mulryan, producer/director Of course I’d heard of the battle of Kinsale, but exactly what happened at Kinsale was a mystery to me. Seventeenth-century Irish history … Read more