Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 306
A History of Fastnet Lighthouse by James Morrissey
Trade Paperback; 17.00 Euro / 22.50 USD / 11.00 UK; 110 pages, with full colour illustrations throughout
This book provides a detailed account in words and pictures of how this architectural gem was constructed in one of the most hazardous sites in Europe and under perilous conditions.
This Human Season by Louise Dean
Trade Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 368 pages [Add To Basket]
It is December 1979. Kathleen's son Sean has been convicted of a crime on behalf of the IRA and sent to Long Kesh prison - newly renamed the Maze. John Dunn has just taken up a job as a prison guard after leaving the army. Both will be shocked at what they find. Both will try to do the right thing, and fail. Neither will ever be the same again. Louise Dean's sensational new novel deals with one of the most explosive and morally complex incidents in recent British history. THIS HUMAN SEASON is a powerful, confronting, humane, and blackly funny examination of the lives of ordinary people when placed in the vice of history.
Was Ireland a Colony?: Economics, Politics and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ireland edited by Terrence McDonough with an afterword by Terry Eagleton
Trade Paperback; 30.00 Euro / 36.00 USD / 20.00 UK; 360 pages
The nineteenth-century history of Irish economics, politics and culture cannot be properly understood without examining Ireland's colonial condition. Recent political developments and economic success have revived interest in the study of the colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland that is more nuanced than the traditional nationalist or academic revisionist view of Irish history. This new approach has arisen in several fields of historical investigation, notably culture, economics and political history.
Twists of Fate: Stories Behind Irish Battles and Sieges by John McCormack
Trade Paperback; 16.50 Euro / 20.00 USD / 11.00 UK; 232 pages [Add To Basket]
This book brings the reader behind the scenes in the heroic defence of Strongholds such as Drogheda, Limerick, Derry, Dunboy and others against the besieging armies. The battles of Clontarf, Faughert, The Yellow Ford, Benburb and others are brought vividly to life with little-known and fascinating details that are not usually found in history books.
How did Cromwell seem to lose his head at the siege of Clonmel? What order given by Hugh O’Donnell at Kinsale caused all his foot soldiers to flee in panic? In what famous battle did the leader swap clothes with his General so that he would be less conspicuous? How did William of Orange come close to losing his life just before the battle of the Boyne even began? Read how during the siege of Derry, a certain fat gentleman fancying that several of the garrison were looking at him with hungry eyes hid himself away for two days!
Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty
Paperback; 11.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 7.50 UK; 210 pages
This novel is the story of Cot Daley, a young Irish girl kidnapped from her home in Galway and shipped out to Barbados where more than fifty thousand Irish sold as indentured servants to the plantation owners of the Caribbean and worked the land alongside African slaves.
Towpath Tours: A Guide to Cycling Ireland’s Waterways by John Dunne
Paperback; 13.50 Euro / 17.00 USD / 9.50 UK; 374 pages
For cyclists, the towpaths of Ireland’s waterways are a perfect amenity, a treasure trove of tranquil settings, constantly changing scenery and glimpses of our past. They afford a safe, fume-free environment without the access problems of our hills and mountains. Availing of the paths once used by horses to pull barges along canals and canalised rivers, the author documents and maps 29 recommended off-road tours along some of Ireland’s most scenic and historic waterways.
Foreign Affections: Essays on Edmund Burke
Paperback; 30 Euro / 36.00 USD / 24.00 UK; 280 pages [Add To Basket]
These essays are dominated by Edmund Burke and by the accounts of the ways in which he and some of those that he influenced understood the revolutionary changes that produced the modern world. The issues of liberty and empire, faction and revolution, universality, equality, authority, sectarian vice and democratic virtue are central here. Dominating them all is the question of how traditional feeling and affection can be retained within the revolutionary and colonial worlds that emerged at the close of the eighteenth century. The answers to this question emerge from the different interpretations of the American and French Revolutions that were to be so influential for generations after Burke. In addition, he posed the colonial question in Ireland before it was posed more generally. Was liberty compatible with colonial rule? Ultimately, Burke secured his position by his condemnation of colonial as well as revolutionary violence. But in those others dealt with here, especially in Tocqueville and Acton, colonial atrocity is condoned or supported while revolutionary violence is condemned out of hand. This, it is argued here, is constitutive of the European anti-revolutionary position which Burke helped to create but to which he nevertheless remains alien.
The Irish Round Tower: Origins and Architecture Explored by Brian Lalor
Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 26.00 USD / 14.00 UK; 250 pages, with black and white illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
The remains of over 70 round towers survive in Ireland, the only form of architecture unique to Ireland. Many are in association with surviving monastic settlements in some beautiful and historic sites. This fully-illustrated study outlines their architectural design and construction, their function, their landscape setting and the uniqueness of each round tower site.
The Tailor and Ansty by Eric Cross
Paperback; 11.00 Euro . 15.00 USD / 7.50 UK; 224 pages [Add To Basket]
The Tailor and Ansty was banned soon after its first publication in 1942 and became the subject of much bitter controversy. It has become a modern Irish classic, promising to make immortal the Tailor and his irrepressible wife, Ansty. The Tailor never travelled further than Scotland, yet the breadth of the world could not contain the wealth of his humour and fantasy. All human life is here – marriages, inquests, matchmaking, wakes – and always the Tailor, his wife and their black cow.
Civil War in Connacht 1922-23 by Nollaig O Gradhra
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 9.00 UK; 186 pages [Add To Basket]
Very little has been written about the Civil War in Connacht. In this book Nollaig Ó Gadhra draws extensively on notes compiled by J. J. Waldron of Tuam, placing them in a national context. He gives a breakdown of the IRA command in 1922 and a remarkable description of the stand-off during the summer of 1922 when the British left their barracks and the rival pro- and anti-Treaty forces competed for possession of the vacated buildings.
Gregory Carr, Bookseller
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