Showing titles in Ireland

Through the centuries, the good folk in Ireland have grown pleasant traditions and habits to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child during Christmas. However, Christmas in Ireland does not just celebrate one or two special days; Christmas lasts 12 days, and perhaps even a little bit longer. An Irish Christmas and the Storyteller, set in 1894, introduces one of the many country villages in Ireland and the eager villagers' preparations to get ready days and weeks ahead.

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 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...

In Speaking My Mind Leo Varadkar shares his pride in helping to bring about transformational changes, such as marriage equality. He describes experiences that only a prime minister could have – speaking frankly to Pope Francis on the legacy of church abuses, connecting with Barack Obama about both being the ‘tall, dark guy with the funny name’, navigating challenges such as the pandemic and the fallout from Brexit. And he writes honestly about the costs that go with the immense privilege of holding high office.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

When a young Mary McAleese told a priest that she planned to become a lawyer, the priest dismissed the idea: she knew no one in the law, and she was female. The reality of what she went on to achieve - despite those obstacles, and despite a sectarian attack that forced her family to flee their home - is even more improbable. In this luminous memoir, Mary McAleese traces that astonishing arc: from the tight streets of north Belfast, to a professorship in Dublin while still in her twenties, behind-the-scenes work on the peace process, and two triumphant terms as President of Ireland.

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 ...

In Albert Reynolds: Risktaker for Peace, Conor Lenihan takes the reader on a journey through the former Taoiseach’s fascinating life. From his early days in Roscommon, Reynolds’ determination and hard work saw him rise from a humble clerical job with Irish Rail to become one of Ireland’s best-known showbiz promoters. But it is as creator of the template for peace on the island of Ireland that he, deservedly, will be best remembered. Reynolds’ extraordinary progress from the cut-throat world of business to local politics, and, ultimately, government ministries, was driven by the ...

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 ...

On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives—and change his own forever. The IRA bomb that exploded in their boat killed Knatchbull's grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his twin brother Nicholas, and local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy.

Being Eclipsed describes women’s lives under the care of the Church and State in Ireland at the beginning of the mid-19th century throughout the 20th century. It gives an overview of women who had to turn to prostitution out of necessity in order to survive, and also on nuns who were put in charge of them under catholic church rule creating a double-standard.

Arguably the most significant figure in Ireland’s fight against TB, this sensitive and compelling biography tells the fascinating story of Dorothy Stopford Price. Unjustly forgotten, Price made heroic efforts to rid Ireland of tuberculosis and was responsible for the introduction of the BCG vaccine to Ireland. MacLellan recounts a remarkable life, offering a fascinating insight into Price’s Anglo-Irish background, her startling involvement in the struggle for Irish independence and her brilliant and controversial medical career in the newly-independent state.

Donegal was the bastion of Home Rule conservative nationalism during the tumultuous period 1911–25, while County Derry was a stronghold of hard-line unionism. In this time of immense political upheaval between these cultural and social majorities lay the deeply symbolic, religiously and ethnically divided, and potentially combustible, Derry City. What had once been a distinct, unified, socio-economic and cultural area (to nationalists and unionists alike) became an international frontier or borderland, overshadowed by the bitter legacy of Partition. The region was the hardest hit by the ...

In the spring of 1920, a remarkable phenomenon occurred in Ireland: the people took over the administration of law and order in their own communities and turned their backs on the enforced British judicial system. It became international news. Small tribunals adjudicated in local disputes about land, the local Volunteer companies abducted and punished thieves and petty criminals, directed public order at race meetings and fair days, and in parts of the country burnt down the existing court houses. Retreat from Revolution is the first in-depth account of the courts system established by a ...

The 1921 partition of Ireland had huge ramifications for almost all aspects of Irish life and was directly responsible for hundreds of deaths and injuries, with thousands displaced from their homes and many more forced from their jobs. Two new justice systems were created; the effects on the major religions were profound, with both jurisdictions adopting wholly different approaches; and major disruptions were caused in crossing the border, with invasive checks and stops becoming the norm. And yet, many bodies remained administered on an all-Ireland basis. The major religions remained all-...

The Battle of Britain, regarded by historians as one of the greatest air battles in the history of warfare, was an early turning point in the Second World War. In the summer of 1940, the German army had, with astonishing speed, mercilessly swept aside all before them and were perched on the northern coastline of France. Outright victory over all of Europe was impeded only by the expanse of the English Channel. The supremely confident, yet-to-be defeated Luftwaffe (German Air Force) were eager for continued action, to claim air superiority and victory over an outnumbered RAF and clear the ...