From Partition to Brexit: The Irish Government and Northern Ireland by Donnacha ó Beacháin (Manchester University Press, £75.00 hb / £22.99 pb) Peter Hegarty Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Associate Professor of Politics at the School of Law and Government at DCU, begins and ends his book with discussions of the Ulster question’s affronts to democracy. Partition, he tells us, was an…
The World of Books by the books editor This weekend the world will mark, in different ways, the centenary of the armistice that brought the fighting in the Great War, otherwise ‘the war to end all wars’, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918. These commemorations of the…
The Liberties by Maurice Curtis (Currach Press, €14.99) The Back of the Hack: Growing Up in the Liberties by Kathleen Clifford (A & A Farmar, €15.00) Some years ago author Maurice Curtis brought out a history of the Liberties, that district of Dublin to the south west that once lay outside the city walls, and where over…
The plight of refugees in Latin America has been getting lots of coverage of late as a caravan of immigrants heads through Mexico to the US border. Last Friday night’s Unreported Word (Channel 4), subtitled ‘Venezuela’s Lost Children’ focused on some personal stories of teens crossing from Venezuela to Colombia in the hope of a…
Pat O’Kelly November is a month of remembrance maybe made more poignant this year with the commemoration of the ending of World War I. Two concerts, tomorrow (November 9) in the National Concert Hall and on Saturday (November 10) in Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, will focus not only on the horrors of war but…
Who Do I Think I Am?: A Memoir by Homan Potterton (Merrion Press, €24.99) The former director of the National Gallery of Ireland, now living in retirement in the France, scored something of a literary success with Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled, his memoir of his years of growth in Anglo-Irish Meath. This was perhaps a feat…
Waterford Merchants and their Families on Distant Shores: Traders in Spain and France from 1600 to 1800 by Liam Murphy (Kingdom Books, €24.00) This is an account of the Waterford merchants who emigrated to the port cities of Spain, France and the Spanish Netherlands between 1600 and 1800 as well as the history of…
Peter Hegarty Reporting the Troubles: Journalists tell their stories of the Northern Ireland conflict compiled by Deric Henderson and Ivan Little, with a foreword by Senator George Mitchell (Blackstaff Press) £14.99 / €16.00) Fifty years ago this month RUC constables attacked people peacefully demonstrating for civil rights in Derry. One of them laid into Martin Cowley,…
Katie (12A) Why does the woman who put Irish boxing on the international map receive relatively little attention from the media? Is it because she doesn’t disgrace herself enough in public like Conor McGregor? Or, more ominously, because she tends to mention the dreaded ‘G’ word, i.e. God – society’s latest taboo – in interviews? Imagine…
Last Sunday morning I thought I might have stepped into an alternative reality when the 8am version of It Says in the Papers (RTÉ Radio 1) started as follows: “Winter time is here and the country has a new President.” But hold a while there (as George Hook might say), the news bulletin said we…
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone