Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 299
A History of Ulster by Jonathan Bardon
Trade Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 928 pages
Dynamic and volatile, Ulster is brought to life in this meticulously researched history spanning nine thousand years of the politics, culture and economy of the province – the early settlements; the Viking and Norman invasions; the plantations and the Penal Laws; the rise of the United Irishmen and Orangeism; the Act of Union; emigration and the Great Famine; the linen industry and shipbuilding; the Home Rule crisis and partition; the Second World War and the blitz; civil rights and the turmoil of the Troubles.
Through a sensitive use of a wide range of sources – contemporary letters and diaries, journals and newspapers, official documents and maps – Jonathan Bardon, author of the acclaimed Belfast: An Illustrated History, captures the energy and the obstinacy of Ulster. Stunning in its scope and elegant in its presentation, this is an authoritative and consistently readable history of the region and its people.
Heroic Option: The Irish in the British Army by Desmond and Jean Brown
Hardback; 40.00 Euro / 47.00 USD / 25.00 UK; 330 pages, with photo insert [Add To Basket]
It is a curious paradox that, while for many centuries there has been deep antagonism between the British and the Irish, the latter have fought the former's wars with exemplary courage and tenacity. This has never been better demonstrated than when, as a result of the Irish regiments' superb service in the South African War (Boer War) at the end of the 19th Century, Queen Victoria ordered the formation of the Irish Guards in 1900 as a mark of the Nation's gratitude. Even after the trauma of Partition, Irishmen continued to serve in Irish regiments in large numbers and the tradition continued today. Indeed during the Second World War a very significant number of the most influential generals were of Irish extraction.
Nationalism and the Irish Party: Provincial Ireland 1910-1916 by Michael Wheatley
Hardback; 70.00 Euro / 85.00 USD / 50.00 UK; 295 pages
In this book, Michael Wheatley examines Irish politics in the last years of the Union, before war and uprising transformed Irish and British politics. Focusing particularly on the Irish Party, he provides a detailed, scholarly analysis and challenges the view that the party was doomed.
John Redmond's constitutional, parliamentary, Irish Party went from dominating Irish politics to oblivion in just four years from 1914-1918. The goal of limited Home Rule, peacefully achieved, appeared to die with it. Given the speed of the party's collapse, its death has been seen as inevitable. Though such views have been challenged, there has been no detailed study of the Irish Party in the last years of union with Britain, before the world war and the Easter Rising transformed Irish politics. Through a study of five counties in provincial Ireland - Leitrim, Longford, Roscommon, Sligo, and Westmeath - that history has now been written. Far from being 'rotten', the Irish Party was representative of nationalist opinion and still capable of self-renewal and change. However, the Irish nationalism at this time was also suffused with a fierce anglophobia and sense of grievance, defined by its enemies, which rapidly came to the fore, first in the Home Rule crisis and then in the war. Redmond's project, the peaceful attainment of Home Rule, simply could not be realised.
In the Company of William Hazlitt: Thoughts for the 21st Century by Maurice Whelan
Trade Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 17.00 UK; 206 pages [Add To Basket]
Hazlitt is presented here as a great investigator of the inner world and as a precursor to Freud, but also as going beyond the founder of psychoanalysis and anticipating modern developments in that field.
The author argues strongly for Hazlitt to be taken seriously as a thinker and writer of extraordinary relevance to our present world, a true spirit for our age. In his own lifetime and since, he was regarded as one of the greatest writers of prose in the English language, yet he was a thorn in the side of the establishment: opposing slavery, critical of Wordworth's poetry glorifying war, defending civil liberties, arguing against the British dispossession of Ireland and for Catholic Emancipation.
Conquering England: Ireland in Victorian London by Fintan Cullen and R.F. Foster
Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 25.00 USD / 13.00 UK; 80 pages, with 50 colour and black-and-white images
Under the Union between Britain and Ireland in 1801, the two countries were engaged in a relationship that was quarrelsome, contentious and in many ways interdependent. Yet it also provided a wider arena for certain ambitions in literature, politics and the arts. Irish talent was exported to London in the nineteenth century; by the turn of the twentieth it was being imported back to an Ireland undergoing political radicalisation and a cultural renaissance. This book, which accompanies a National Portrait Gallery exhibition, explores the Irish presence in London during the Victorian period, focusing on prominent individuals including the writers Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and G.B. Shaw; theatrical impresarios such as Bram Stoker; history painters such as Daniel Maclise; charismatic politicians such as Charles Stewart Parnell and colourful journalists such as T.P. O'Connor. Through these influential individuals, the changing perspectives on Ireland that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century are revealed.
At Arm’s Length: Aristocrats in the Republic of Ireland by Anne Chambers#
Hardback; 20.00 Euro / 26.00 USD / 14.00 UK; 210 pages [Add To Basket]
Living in Ireland today, for the most part unobtrusively and ignored By the greater Irish public, are the descendants of Ireland's former ruling ascendancy. Some are directly descended from Ireland's most ancient kings and chiefs, their ancestry stretching back beyond history, others can claim an Irish pedigree merely five-hundred years old. But By virtue of past historical events and present perceptions they are, despite their ancestry, regarded as being less Irish than the rest of the Irish population.
The integration of the aristocratic order into the political and social structures of the Republic of Ireland has taken longer than elsewhere. Since Irish independence from Britain a gulf existed between them and the rest of Irish society that was more pronounced and fundamental than the mere social divide usually found between aristocrat and commoner in other countries. In Ireland the 'Us and Them' mentality that existed between Irish aristocrats and the rest of the population has more to do with history and politics than with social status, privilege or material wealth.
At Arm's Length traces the historical and political evolution that lead to this division. In an innovative and unique approach, the author Anne Chambers elicits the views of 14 present-day Irish chiefs and peers who live and work in the Republic of Ireland, on that historical evolution, as well as on a range of social and political issues that shape their sense of place and belonging in the Ireland of the 21st century. She also examines how the rest of the Irish population and the State they created contributed to keeping the most ethnic class amongst them at arm's length.
World War I: 1914-1918: Ireland’s Memorial Records (on CD-ROM) compiled by the Committee of the Irish National War Museum
CDROM; 100.00 Euro / 130.00 USD / 70.00 UK [Add To Basket]
The objective of this volumes is to preserve the names of over 49,000 Irishmen who lost their lives fighting in the Great War, World War I, 1914-1918. The collection was compiled by The Committee of the Irish National War Memorial under the direction of the Earl of Ypres. It is the most complete record known to exist and was published in 1923.
This record is unique in many ways. Firstly, not only does it record the names of the dead, it also records their rank, regiment, date of death and regimental number. In most cases the soldier’s county or place of birth and the place and date of death are recorded. All 32 counties in Ireland lost men in the Great War. More than 5,000 from Antrim, 4,800 from Dublin and 3,000 from Cork alone. Indeed it is likely that every village, town and city in Ireland at the time was touched in some way by the loss.
Beautiful artwork by the renowned Irish artist Harry Clarke completes this unique production, as users can view high quality scanned images from the original publication. Only one hundred copies of the original publication were ever produced. It is extremely rare.
Users can either search or browse the books, names and entries. The CD also reproduces the original introduction from 1923, and a new preface with plenty of statistic gathered while databasing the collection. There is also a biography of Harry Clarke, with information about his artwork over many years.
Every effort has been made to produce a high quality facsimile of the original 8 volumes published in 1923, whilst also using the technology available today to ease access to that information and compile valuable statistics that will enrich our understanding of Ireland’s place in the Great War.
This CD-ROM contains: · All eight volumes of the original publication, with 3,177 pages · Names of over 49,000 individuals who died, and all details about them recorded in the original books · 16 different page designs by Harry Clarke · High qaulity scanned images of every page of the original publication · A beautifully designed DVD case incorporating the images of Harry Clarke · Help files and detailed introduction System Requirements PC OS: Windows 98, SE, ME, NT4, 2000, XP or higher. Processor: PII or above Mac OS: OSX Power Macintosh 16Mb of available RAM Browser Supported browsers: Internet Explorer version 5.5 or above; Netscape version 7.1 or above; Mozilla 1.7.3 or above; Firefox 1.0 or above; Safari Browser (default browser built into Mac) Image Viewer Alternatiff (available to download for free at www.alternatiff.com) Publishing Platform: Lucene, HTML, Flash
Anyone But Him by Sheila O’Flanagan
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 600 pages [Add To Basket]
Andie and her sister Jin have never seen eye to eye. Andie doesn't envy Jin her marriage to a wealthy businessman, while Jin can't believe Andie's happy with her man-free existence (if only she knew!). But when their widowed mother Cora comes back from a Caribbean cruise with more than just a suntan, Andie and Jin are united in horror. Who is this gorgeous young man who's swept their mother off her feet? What the women really need is a friend to set the world to rights with – but can they be friends with each other?
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