Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 216
Making Peace in Ireland by Jeremy Smith
Hardback; 35.00 Euro / 40.00 USD / 20.00 UK; Longman, 268 pages [Add To Basket]
For nearly thirty years many believed the conflict in Northern Ireland an intractable problem. The failure to resolve the conflict in Ireland has had epic and tragic consequences, appearing impervious to solution. This book shows how the seemingly unachievable was finally achieved.
This book travels the slow, painful journey from political conflict to settlement with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and explores the role and impact of party leaders drawing their communities into an accord with once sworn enemies. It reveals the dynamics of change that laid the groundwork for political solution and the role of intermediaries who modestly orchestrated events and constructed the formula for a peace agreement. Examining early attempts to find a solution and their inevitable failure, the author the focuses on the 1990s, the Joint Declaration of 1993 and the cease-fires of 1994, leading to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the outstanding problems, especially dissident Republican paramilitary groups, arms decommissioning, future Loyalist parades and the vexed question of policing in Northern Ireland.
This is one of the first books to unravel all the complications of the peace process in Northern Ireland and a must for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Anglo-Irish politics.
Greenspeak: Ireland in Her Own Words by Paddy Sammon
Paperback; 19.99 Euro / 23.00 USD / 14.00 UK; Town House, 240 pages [Add To Basket]
This book explains the nuances of Irish English, the unique version of English spoken in Ireland, that has developed through the interweaving of the English and Irish language. The 2,000 entries -words and phrases in both English and Irish - cover every aspect of Ireland from food to folklore, poetry to politics, triads to technology. Irish-language headings come complete with translations and phonetics. The chronology and etymology of words and phrases are also provided and thousands of quotations illuminate the headwords and put them into context. The book is easy to read and the ideal companion for students, teachers, word-buffs and visitors to Ireland; it paints a vivid word-picture of the country.
The Flight of the Earls by John McCavitt
Hardback; 40.00 Euro / 47.00 USD / 30.00 UK; Gill & Macmillan, 277 pages [Add To Basket]
Until the end of the sixteenth century, Ulster was the most Gaelic part of Ireland. Fifty years later, it was the least Gaelic part. In 1607 Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and other Gaelic chieftains fled to the continent and settled in Rome. Their lands were declared forfeit to the crown and were cleared for the plantation of Ulster that followed. Why did O'Neill and those other chieftains flee? This outstanding history gives the reader the answer to this and many other questions. O'Neill had rebelled against the crown in the 1590s, had eventually been defeated at the Battle of Kinsale and had reached a nervous but secure peace settlement with the English crown. He was left in possession of his lands and was not formally threatened by London. However, crown officials in Dublin - especially the grasping Sir Arthur Chichester - maintained a campaign of harrassment against O'Neill and his followers that played no small part in driving them from their ancestral lands. Throughout the remainder of his life, O'Neill intended to return. He never did. His flight was one of the decisive moments in Irish history. It opened the way for the Ulster plantation, one of the truly crucial events in the formation of modern Ireland.
Great Irish Drinking Stories edited and introduced by Peter Haining
Paperback; 16.00 Euro / 20.00 USD / 10.00 UK; Souvenir Press, 333 pages [Add To Basket]
Ireland's drinking culture has been exported around the world and given the Irish a reputation as an entertaining and talkative nation. It has been an inspiration for Ireland's other great export, her writers. From James Joyce, Flann O'Brien and Brendan Behan to Roddy Doyle and Patrick McCabe, all have written about drinking and its effects, the stuff of life and sometimes the troubling consequences. The writers in this anthology are: Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe, Frank O'Connor, Shane MacGowan, William Trevor, Malachy McCourt, Bernard Shaw, Peter Tremayne, Robert J. Martin, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien, Marian Keyes, Sean O'Faolain, Edna O'Brien, Bernard MacLaverty, Brian Friel, Sean O'Casey, J.M. Synge, Glenn Patterson, William Carleton, Lynn Doyle and Eamonn Sweeney.
Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The 8th Report edited by Ann Marie Gray, et. al.
Trade Paperback; 32.00 Euro / 40.00 USD / 20.00 UK; Pluto Press, 216 pages [Add To Basket]
This book is an indispensable guide to attitudes to current social and political issues in Northern Ireland. Based on extensive data gathered in the annual Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, it features a series of essays by leading academics that discuss and comment on a wide range of public attitudes to religion, politics and social policy issues. These include devolution and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement; community relations; attitudes to science and genetic information; education; housing; pensions; transport; social inequality and the rights of the child. This is the latest report on social attitudes in Northern Ireland and is based on data from the 1998 and 1999 surveys, as well as drawing on material from previous years. It is essential reading for all those concerned with social and political debate in Northern Ireland.
Undertow by John F. Deane
Trade Paperback; 16.00 Euro / 20.00 USD / 10.00 UK; Blackstaff Press, 314 pages [Add To Basket]
Sheer survival is difficult enough for the people of a small island off the west of Ireland - what chance do they have of love or even of dignity? In the 1950s their battle is with the savage forces of poverty, disease and religious constraint. Terrible things happen - rape, incest, bestiality - and yet somehow compassion, love and generosity of spirit manage to continue. Brooding over it all is the elemental figure of Big Bucko, symbolic of all that is brutal and disruptive.
Four decades later, the island is facing other dangers: the Spanish fishing boats that threaten the livelihood of the trawlermen, the encroachment of tourism and the gradual disintegration of community. But still the people strive to transcend their common legacy of suffering, to reach for love and a new connectedness.
Mythic, lyrical and moving, this novel sounds the depths of our relationship with nature and with each other, and bears witness to love's endurance in spite of all.
Charity by Fiona O'Brien
Trade Paperback; 12.99 Euro / 15.00 USD / 8.00 UK; New Island, 311 pages [Add To Basket]
Behind the deceptively tranquil facades of Dublin 4, where the new breed of super-rich collect desirable properties faster than designer labels, the so-called charity set are being anything but charitable! Lornagh Murphy, Dublin beauty and charity ball organiser, has relationship problems. Her image-fixated boyfriend Simon has plans for an engagement party that will make the pair the talk of the town, but Lornagh isn't so sure. Enter Sean O'Rourke, dashing head architect on the new building for Lornagh's charity. The pair may not exactly see eye-to-eye at first, but there's definitely something simmering … that is until Penelope Cruz's double enters the scene, wearing … well, nothing. Add label-obsessed Melissa Sheehan, mix with coke-crazed millionaire Michael Moriarty, throw in some fund 'mismanagement' and a brush with Dublin's most ruthless gangster, and you'll see that when it's all in the name of charity, the rule book gets flung.
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