Novedades

How do we approach troubled histories? Should historians attempt to recover the past and tell it as they imagined it really was? Or should they be more creative and write histories better suited to the needs of the present? These vexed questions inform historical writing on twentieth century Ireland. This volume of 'problem-articles' and review-essays explores what historian John M. Regan calls 'historical anomalies'. These are identified where inconsistencies and errors appear in the interpretation of historical information. Why does critical evidence sometimes go unseen? How does a ...

Charles Haughey maintained one of the most controversial and brilliant careers in the history of Irish politics, but for every stage in his mounting success there was one issue that complicated, and almost devastated, his ambitions to lead Irish politics: Northern Ireland. In ‘A Failed Political Entity’ Stephen Kelly uncovers the complex motives that underlie Haughey’s fervent attitude towards the political and sectarian violence that was raging across the border. Early in Haughey’s governmental career he took a hard line against the IRA, leading many to think he was antipathetic ...

Almost a century after his untimely death in 1922, this lively and insightful new assessment explores the man Michael Collins described as ‘father of us all’ and reclaims Arthur Griffith as the founder of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Free State. Since his death when President of Dáil Éireann, Griffith’s role has often been misrepresented. Too radical for some, he was not militant enough for others. His legacy belongs to no single political party today. Colum Kenny argues that efforts to ‘other’ Griffith as ‘un-Irish’ raise uncomfortable questions about Irish identity. A ...

In this sequel to his bestselling Easter Rising 1916: The Trials, Seán Enright puts the great legal cases of the period into context with exacting clarity, including the Mac Curtain Inquest, the trials of MacSwiney, Markievicz, Maher and Foley, the Bloody Sunday courts martial and the trials under martial law. Following the executions of the 1916 leaders, a new government policy of conciliation was attempted but quickly faltered. Rebel prisoners were released, the Great War reached its climax, and Ireland was gripped by the conscription crisis and subsequent resentment over exclusion from ...

General Liam Lynch was a key figure in the Irish Revolution and remains one of the most celebrated IRA leaders of his era. His republicanism was shaped both by his upbringing in Limerick and by the aftermath of the Easter Rising. By the time of the War of Independence, Lynch was in command of the IRA’s Cork No. 2 Brigade and masterminded some of the most important actions against British forces, such as the Fermoy arms raid and the daring kidnapping of British General Cuthbert Lucas. Adamantly opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, regarding it a betrayal of the Irish Republic, Lynch became ...

This is the first-ever biography of Emmet Dalton, an American-born Dubliner, Home Ruler and later Republican, whose extraordinary military career as a British officer, IRA leader and General in the Free State army brought him from Flanders to Beal na Bláth . A decorated hero of the Battle of the Somme, he returned from the war with the rank of Captain and transferred his military expertise to the now rampant IRA, serving as Director of Training, and greatly impressing Michael Collins with his extraordinary daring and nerve. Soon befriending Collins and becoming his close confidante, he ...

This fully illustrated book explores the history of the fishery piers and harbours of Galway and north Clare. A testament to these structures as feats of engineering, it is also a riveting account of the human aspect that shadowed their construction; a beautiful rendering of the maritime activities that gave life to the Wild Atlantic Way – kelp-making, fishing, turf distribution, and sea-borne trade. 'Humble Works for Humble People' nurtures the retelling of human stories surrounding the piers, giving voice to the unacknowledged legacy of the lives that were their making. The Office of ...

This collection of essays offers diverse perspectives on the impact of the Great Famine in Ireland, with particular focus on the experience in the province of Ulster – much neglected in histories, but which prompted the political geography and sectarian divisions that persisted into the twentieth century. Edited by Patrick Fitzgerald and Anthony Russell, John Mitchel, Ulster and the Great Irish Famine delves into the immeasurable impact of starvation, illness, and emigration on Irish society and the diaspora. The use of relatively neglected sources shines a vital new light on the ...

Sisters of the Revolutionaries focuses on the lives of Margaret and Mary Brigid Pearse, whose brothers, Patrick and Willie, were executed for their role in the Easter Rising and have been commemorated as martyrs ever since. Comparatively little is known about the two sisters, despite their considerable talents and their efforts to uphold the image of their brothers’ legacies. Margaret was an Irish language activist, politician and educator, working with Patrick in founding St Enda’s School in Dublin and taking it into her own hands following his execution. Mary Brigid was a musician and...

Voices from the Easter Rising is a vivid collection of dramatic eyewitness accounts of the events of Easter Week 1916, which detail how the Rising unfolded in Dublin and in a range of other Irish cities, towns and villages. Extraordinary first-hand testimonies from the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, the British Army, members of the public and civil servants reveal how, in the streets of Dublin and around the country, the lives of its citizens were changed forever. Drawn from previously unpublished letters, diaries, memoirs, statements from the Bureau ...

This is the extraordinary life story of Ernie O’Malley (1897-1957), one of Ireland’s most complex and influential Republican figures, and later an acclaimed writer. Born in Castlebar in 1897, O’Malley became devoted to Ireland’s fight for freedom at an early age. As a twenty-three-year-old IRA Commandant-General, leading 7,000 volunteers in the brutal War of Independence, and later IRA senior commander during the Civil War, he was captured three times, severely tortured, escaped twice, wounded fourteen times and survived a forty-one-day hunger strike. What distinguishes ...

Spiritual Wounds challenges the widespread belief that the contentious events of the Irish Civil War (1922–23) were covered in a total blanket of silence. The book uncovers an archive of published testimonies by pro- and antitreaty men and women, written in both English and Irish. Most of the testimonies discussed were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, and nearly all have been overlooked in historical study to date. Revolutionaries went to great lengths to testify to the ‘spiritual wounds’ of civil war: they adopted fictionalised disguises, located their writings in other places or ...