Sir,—I have noticed one or two claims in Patrick Maume’s review of my biography of Arthur Griffith (HI 24.2, March/April 2016) that I think necessitate a response. Irrespective of his strange attempt to pigeon-hole me as an ideologue, he states that I describe various figures in the text as ‘British agents’—something that I did not do—and then he claims that it is I who makes ‘over-zealous deductions’ based on no evidence. Maume also says that I did not use relevant source material. In fact, I did. For instance, I used the minutes of Dáil Éireann and its cabinet. Are these not the most relevant and critical sources of all for researching and conceptualising the subject-matters he mentioned? Maume accuses me of committing ‘blunders’ in historical analysis but perhaps it is not I who is making the blunders.—Yours etc.,
OWEN McGEE