Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 339
Ruairi O Bradaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary by Robert White
Hardback; 35.00 Euro / 45.00 USD / 28.00 UK; 436 pages, with black-and-white photos throughout
"In a very real sense, Ruairí Ó Bradáigh can . . . be said to be the last, or one of the last Irish Republicans. Studies of the Provisional movement to date have invariably focused more on the Northerners and the role of people like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. But an understanding of them is not possible without appreciating where they came from and from what tradition they have broken. Ruairí Ó Bradáigh is that tradition and that is why this account of his life and politics is so important." —from the foreword by Ed Moloney, author of A Secret History of the IRA
Since the mid-1950s, Ruairí Ó Bradáigh has played a singular role in the Irish Republican Movement. He is the only person who has served as chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, as president of the political party Sinn Féin, and to have been elected, as an abstentionist, to the Dublin parliament. Today, he is the most prominent and articulate spokesperson of those Irish Republicans who reject the peace process in Northern Ireland. His rejection is rooted in his analysis of Irish history and his belief that the peace process will not achieve peace. Instead it will support the continued partition of Ireland and result in continued, inevitable, conflict.
The child of Irish Republican veterans, Ó Bradáigh has led IRA raids, been arrested and interned, escaped and been "on the run," and even spent a period of time on a hunger strike. An articulate spokesman for the Irish Republican cause, he has at different times been excluded from Northern Ireland, Britain, the United States, and Canada. He was a key figure in the secret negotiation of a bilateral IRA-British truce. His "Notes" on these negotiations offer special insight to the 1975 truce, the IRA cease-fires of the 1990s, and the current peace process in Ireland.
Ó Bradáigh has been a staunch defender of the traditional Republican position of abstention from participation in the parliaments in Dublin, Belfast, and Westminster. When Sinn Féin voted to recognize these parliaments in 1970, he led the walkout of the party convention and spearheaded the creation of Provisional Sinn Féin. He served as president of Provisional Sinn Féin until 1983, when he was forced from the position by his successor, Gerry Adams. In 1986, with Adams as its president, Provisional Sinn Féin recognized the Dublin parliament. Ó Bradáigh led another walkout and later became president of Republican Sinn Féin, a position he still holds.
Bobby Sands: Nothing But an Unfinished Song by Denis O’Hearn
Large Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 25.00 USD / 13.00 UK; 434 pages [Add To Basket]
At seventeen, Bobby Sands was interested in music, girls and soccer.Ten years later, he led his fellow prisoners on a protest that grabbed the world's attention.Bobby Sands turned twenty-seven on hunger strike, after spending almost nine years in prison because of his activities as a member of the Irish Republican Army.When he died on May 5, 1981, on the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike against repressive conditions in Northern Ireland's H-Block prisons, parliaments across the world stopped for a minute's silence in his honour.Nelson Mandela followed his example and led a similar hunger strike in South Africa.Bobby Sands' remarkable life and death have made him the Irish Che Guevara.He is an enduring figure of resistance whose life has inspired millions around the world.But until the publication of this book, nothing has adequately explored the motivation of the hunger strikers, nor recreated this period of history from within the prison cell.Denis O'Hearn's powerful biography, which contains an enormous amount of new material based on primary research and interviews, illuminates for the first time this enigmatic, controversial and heroic figure.
Freewheeling Through Ireland by Edward Enfield
Paperback; 11.00 Euro / 14.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 222 pages
'At one moment you seem to be in the Lake District; then you could be on the moon; they you are in a wilderness; and then beside a Norwegian fjord.' When Edward decided to cycle around Ireland, he was enchanted by prehistoric fortresses, rugged landscapes, and landladies who insisted on washing his shirts. He takes you with him on a gentle ride up the west coast, eating fresh fish and enormous breakfasts along the way, and stopping to chat to peat-cutters, fishermen, eccentric tourists and a famous matchmaker. With his trademark dry wit, observant eye and a sense of the absurd, he is the perfect companion for a tour of Ireland's most beautiful areas from the lakes of Killarney to the idyllic Joyce's Country, and from the dolmens of Clare to the deserts and neolithic remains of Mayo.
The Beginning of the End: The Crippling Disadvantage of a Happy Irish Childhood by Walter Ellis
Large Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 255 pages [Add To Basket]
Walter Ellis grew up in East Belfast. His father was a commercial traveller, his mother a housewife. He and his sister were not abused as children. Ellis was never forced to wear girls' clothes or spend days naked in a cold cellar. Instead, he was sent to school each day and to church on Sunday. In the summer, he and his family went on holiday to the seaside. But, determined that he should not suffer from the crippling disadvantage of a happy Irish childhood, Ellis systematically set about destroying everything that gave him stability. He was expelled from school and dropped out of not one, but two universities. He also acquired as his best friend the Protestant renegade Ronnie Bunting, who, as chief of staff of the INLA, murdered Airey Neave, the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in the carpark of the House of Commons. Bunting was an extraordinary, demonic personality. He once foisted Joe McCann, Ireland's Most Wanted man, on Ellis's mum for the weekend and gave Walter a suitcase to look after that turned out to contain over a hundred thousand pounds - the proceeds of an armed robbery. The last straw came when Ellis was arrested by Special Branch in England on suspicion of plotting to assassinate top government minister William Whitelaw. "The Beginning of the End" is like nothing else that has come out of the Ulster Troubles and is sure to shock, intrigue and entertain.
I Never Knew That About Ireland by Christopher Winn
Hardback; 13.00 Euro / 16.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 306 pages
Bestselling author Christopher Winn takes us on a fascinating journey around Ireland, to discover the tales buried deep in the country's history. Packed full of legends, firsts, birthplaces, inventions and adventures, this book visits each of the four provinces - Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connaught - and unearths the hidden gems that each county in these provinces holds. Discover where people and ideas were born, where dreams were inspired and where the unforgettable figures of Ireland's past now slumber. You'll be able to visit the holy mountain, Croagh Patrick in Country Mayo, where St Patrick is said to have driven all the snakes in Ireland into the sea. At Lismore Castle in County Waterford you will uncover the bathroom dedicated to Fred Astaire, whose sister Adele was the hugely popular Chatelaine of Lismore in the 1930s and 40s. On the winter solstice you can bathe in the sunlight that fills the burial chamber at Newgrange, County Meath - the oldest solar observatory in the world. This irresistible compendium of facts and stories will give you a captivating insight into the people, ideas and events that have shaped the individual identity of every place you visit, and will have you exclaiming again and again: 'Well, I never knew that!'
County Wexford in the Rare Oul Times by Nicholas Furlong
Large Format Paperback; 30.00 Euro / 37.00 USD / 24.00 UK; 248 pages, 409 black-and-white photos
County Wexford in War, 1910-1924. This book contains a wide spectrum of period photographs covering the political and military build-up to World War One, the World War on land and sea, particularly off Wexford’s coast in the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean; the 1916 Rising in Enniscorthy, the War of Independence, The Irish Civil War and the aftermath in the strategically important south-east. A limited number of these books has been printed. (Hardback Available at 50 Euro)
Bloodstains in Ulster by Tom McAlindon
Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 9.00 UK; 174 pages [Add To Basket]
Bloodstains in Ulster recounts the remarkable true story of one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice in Northern Ireland’s long troubled history. The book recovers from near-oblivion the case of Robert Taylor, known in the media as Robert the Painter, who was sentenced to death in Belfast for the savage premeditated murder of Mrs Mary McGowan and then in January 1950 released on a technicality. The defence revealed that contrary to the judge’s express instructions the jurymen and their four RUC keepers had on two occasions separated and spoken to members of the public while on an evening break, thus infringing a rule then operative in Northern Ireland. Having had two trials, Taylor could not be tried again.
Taylor was a Protestant from a hotly Loyalist ghetto, his victim a Catholic, and all the evidence suggests that not only was the judicial process deliberately sabotaged but also that the appeal judges (members of the Grand Lodge Committee of the Orange Order) turned a blind eye to that fact. Taylor returned to his ghetto as a hero. His release was accepted in sullen silence by the Nationalist minority; it fitted with their conception of the way things were.
The case riveted the attention of the divided community for six months, but was subsequently forgotten in the turmoil of the Troubles. Yet it was an omen of 1969, when Nationalist alienation from the state, the judiciary, and the RUC exploded in demands for justice and civil rights, only to be met by Loyalist indignation (orchestrated by Dr Paisley), police partiality, burnings and evictions, and the renaissance of the IRA.
Uniquely, the Taylor case, although it turned on the fate of two socially insignificant individuals, is a single episode which encapsulates in itself the essential meaning of Northern Ireland’s history from 1920 to the start of the Troubles.
500 Years of Irish Silver by Ida Delamer and Conor O’Brien
Hardback; 35.00 Euro / 42.50 USD / 28.00 UK; 232 pages, Full colour illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
This is a fully illustrated catalogue, by two of Ireland's foremost specialists in Irish silver, of the permanent exhibition of some 500 pieces of Irish silver, dating from c. 1500 to the present day, on display in the Museum of Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks. As such, it will be the definitive work on the national collection of late medieval to modern silver. In addition to a catalogue of all the objects on display, the text deals with such topics as the organisation and control of the goldsmith's craft and silversmithing techniques, as well as providing tables of Dublin hallmarks and a full catalogue of Irish makers' marks.
Slurping Through Europe by Regis Robinson
Trade Paperback; 22.50 Euro / 27.50 USD / 17.50 UK; 200 pages, with full colour illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
Exotic, unusual soups and the old favourites from 40 countries, all aimed at tickling the taste buds, are included in this, user-friendly cookbook by retired chef and restaurateur Regis Robinson. Beautifully illustrated with original colour line drawings and photographs.
The Siege of Derry by Carlo Gebler
Trade Paperback; 12.00 Euro / 15.00 USD / 9.00 UK; 366 pages [Add To Basket]
THE SIEGE OF DERRY is one of the key flash points in the troubled history of Ireland and Britain. In 1688 William of Orange had claimed the English throne, forcing the catholic James II to flee to Ireland. From there he hoped to mount his comeback. In December of that year James' troops attempted to take over the protestant city of Derry. To the now-famous cry of 'No Surrender' the apprentice boys closed the city gates to James' army and the 105-day siege begun. The besiegers effectively used cannon and mortar to shell the defenders - with terrifying results - and conditions became desperate as the city began to run out of food. Carlo Gebler's book thrillingly describes both the events leading up to the siege and the heroic struggles within and outside Derry as the five-month battle waged.
Gregory Carr, Bookseller
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