Alcohol, music, animals and vegetables in early nineteenth-century Irish prisons. By Richard Butler James Palmer and Benjamin Woodward, the State’s prison inspectors in early nineteenth-century Ireland, faced a monumental challenge: all around the country, in big county gaols and in small bridewells, prison governors and wardens were a law unto themselves. Affairs were managed on … Read more
A moment in modernism’s development in Ireland. By Brian Trench In April 1926 writers Liam O’Flaherty (front cover) and Francis MacManus debated the role of religion in Irish culture. O’Flaherty was ‘strongly anti-church’ while MacManus was ‘defending it’, according to one of those present, fellow writer Rosamond Jacob. All three were members of the Radical … Read more
KEVIN O’ROURKE Pelican €20 ISBN 9780241398272 Reviewed by Eoin Dillon Eoin Dillon is a scholar of twentieth-century African history. Brexit has produced a crisis in the British body politic unparallelled since the Second World War. Suez in 1956, when France, the UK and Israel tried to re-seize the canal from the Egyptians and had to … Read more
Exploring medieval Ireland’s economy via papal taxation records. By Chris Chevallier There are multiple obstacles hindering the study of the Irish medieval economy. Regionalism and political divisions spatially limited the effective administrative reach of the colonial government. Shifting alliances, conflict and a frontier in constant flux exacerbated this issue. Concerning existing records, colonial financial … Read more
Two competing visions of Ireland are played out in their works, but each, in his own way, transformed the study of medieval Ireland. By Ruairí Cullen The dawn of ‘scientific’ history writing in the nineteenth century produced little original work on the Anglo-Normans in Ireland. Historians had not been kind to Strongbow and his companions, … Read more