JANUARY 01/1909 Claimants to the state pension under the terms of the Old Age Pensions Act (1908) received their first payments at post offices throughout the country. Charged with awarding pensions to men and women aged 70 or over, the Local Government Board (1872) had to contend with the fact that the statutory registration of … Read more
W.J. McCORMACK Michigan State University Press $29.95 ISBN 9781611861914 Reviewed by: Eoin Dillon After reading W.J. (Bill) McCormack’s account of intellectual life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and Britain, the 1916 Rising in Ireland and the role of the Plunkett family, particularly that of George Noble Plunkett and his better-known son, Joseph, military planner of … Read more
‘THOUSANDS OF MEN WERE PASSED FIT WITHOUT ANY MEDICAL EXAMINATION WORTH THE NAME’ By Michael Robinson In spite of the huge increase of research on—and popular interest in—the First World War in recent years, a continuing omission has been those Irishmen who were able to enlist in the British Army, and experience active service, who … Read more
MAURICE WALSH Faber and Faber £26 ISBN 9780571243006 Reviewed by Padraig Yeates This is probably the best overview of the revolutionary era in the current crop of books prompted by the ‘decade of centenaries’. It is superbly crafted and a joy to read. It is particularly suited to an international audience wishing to know more … Read more
THE SINGLE GREATEST ACT OF VANDALISM OF THE IRISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE By Pat Poland On 21 January 1919 the first Dáil was convened in the Mansion House in Dublin and the independence of the Irish Republic was declared; later the same day, the opening shots in, avant la lettre, the Irish War of Independence … Read more