Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 322
James Connolly: A Full Live by Donal Nevin
Hardback; 30.00 Euro / 36.00 USD / 24.00 UK; 850 pages
'Hasn't it been a full life, Lillie, and isn't this a good end?', were James Connolly's last words to his wife in Dublin Castle in the early hours of May 12, 1916 shortly before his execution in Kilmainham Jail. The first fourteen years of Connolly's life were spent in Edinburgh and the next seven years in the King's Liverpool Regiment in Ireland. In 1889, he returned to Edinburgh where he was a socialist activist and organiser for seven years. In 1896, at the age of 28, he was invited to Dublin as socialist organiser, founding the Irish Republican Socialist Party and editing "The Workers' Republic". During seven years in America between 1903 and 1910, Connolly was in turn active with the Socialist Labor Party, organiser for the IWW ('Wobblies') and a national organiser for the Socialist Party of America. Returning to Ireland in 1910 as organiser of the Socialist Party of Ireland, Connolly was appointed Ulster Organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union by James Larkin, succeeding him as acting general secretary in October 1914. As Commander of the Irish Citizen Army, Connolly joined with leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the Easter Rising in 1916, becoming Commandant-General of the Dublin Division of the Army of the Republic and Vice-President of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic.
Nationalism and the Irish Party: Provincial Ireland 1910-1916 by Michael Wheatley
Hardback; 75.00 Euro / 90.00 USD / 50.00 UK; 295 pages [Add To Basket]
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.
Balrothery Poor Law Union, County Dublin, 1839-1851 by Sinead Collins
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages
The Balrothery Poor Law Union served most of north Co. Dublin which in the 1830s was a rural, agricultural area with almost no industry. The main source of employment was an agricultural labourers of whom there was an over-supply due to the continuing growth in population and the transition among the large farmers from tillage to grazing. The Poor Enquiry, established in 1833, carried out an in-depth examination of the area and found there much distress. Its findings are narrated. The establishment of the union, the building of the workhouse and life in the workhouse are described. The Famine years are dealt with in detail. The efforts of the guardians and landlords to cope with the crisis and the effects of the Famine years on the area are also examined.
Smithfield and the Parish of St. Paul, Dublin, 1698-1750 by Brendan Twomey
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages [Add To Basket]
In the 1720s William Hendrick was the leading property developer in the Smithfield area of Dublin. The civic administration of the area at this time was largely within the jurisdiction of the local Church of Ireland vestry of St Paul’s parish of which Hendrick was a member. The book analyses the physical development and the civic administration of Smithfield in the first half of the 18th century. It also gives short biographies of a number of the leading members of the local Protestant elite in this period.
The Liberty and Ormond Boys: Factional Riot in 18th Century Dublin by James Kelly
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages
This study of factional disorder sets the Liberty and Ormond Boys in the contemporary context. The conditions necessary to enable factions to develop and flourish in Dublin were in place by the 1720s, when the city was sufficiently developed physically and demographically to sustain the local and sectoral identities that faction required. Nonetheless, the growth of faction could not have taken place without the breakdown in the authority of the guilds or in the absence of recreational patterns that validated violence. Beginning with the emergence of the Kevan Bail in 1729, the city was periodically racked over the following sixty years by busts of violence as the contending factions sought to establish which was dominant. As the best known and most enduring, the interlinked histories of the Ormond and Liberty Boys provide the centre piece of this book, but the histories of a host of lesser known factions from all parts of Dublin city and county are examined.
Love Life: Poems by Micheal O Siadhail
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 9.00 UK; 118 pages
In "Love Life", one of our most thoughtful and accomplished poets finds a fresh intensity and reach. In four sequences Micheal O'Siadhail tells of a life in love moving through the passionate erotic, the dramas of wooing, promising and quarrelling and the day-by-day of home. The seasons of love unfold - young love opening to intimacy, growth into commitment and the slow transformations of life together. Throughout, the core theme recurs: a lifetime's amazement at the mystery of one woman. The book culminates in the subtleties and variations of growing old while revelling in the love of life a deux.
Pieces of Me: A Life-in-Progress by Roisin Ingle
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 414 pages [Add To Basket]
'The prospect of taking over the 'Regarding Ireland' column scared me witless. If they'd changed the title to 'Regarding Reality TV' or even 'Regarding Roisin', I might have been slightly more enthusiastic. But only slightly ...' Despite her initial reluctance, Roisin Ingle's weekly column in "The Irish Times Magazine" has been enjoyed by thousands of readers over the last three years. In her disarmingly open style - always humorous, often deeply affecting - she muses on life, love and everything in between. Collected together for the first time, the columns are accompanied by new writing in which she reflects on the death of her father, her failed marriage, her unlikely path into journalism and her long-standing love affair with Borza's fish and chips. From her self-destructive years to her spiritual adventures to the summer she found love again in the middle of a Portadown riot, she writes about the journey so far with all the tenderness, humour and honesty her fans have come to expect. "Pieces of Me" will stir, engage and delight readers who will often find their lives reflected back through her pen.
Traditional Irish Embroidery: Mountmellick Work by Sandra Counahan
Large Format Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00USD / 10.00 UK; 140 pages, with illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
This is a practical how-to book for beginners and skilled embroiderers. It covers every aspect of Mountmellick Work, using clear instructions, diagrams and photographs.
Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter by Meda Ryan
Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 20.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 480 pages [Add To Basket]
The story of Tom Barry's life, peppered by his battles with the State and Church, and his constant endeavours to obtain an All Ireland Republic makes him a unique and important figure of Irish history. In 1949 when he addressed huge crowds in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Boston, his voice rang out - 'My one aim is to unite the Irish people - one race...The Border will not fade away, or the Partition will not be ended until such time as the united strength is used in a supreme effort to get rid of it.' It details his involvement on the fringes of the Treaty negotiations; his Republican activities during the Civil War; his engagement in the cease-fire/dump-arms deal of 1923; his term as the IRA's Chief-of-Staff and his participation in IRA conflicts in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s right up to his death in 1980.
Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 376 pages [Add To Basket]
It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasles of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America-Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
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