T. J. Morrissey Big Jim Larkin: Hero or Wrecker? by Emmet O’Connor (UCD Press, €40.00) This is an important book by a historian who follows the evidence where it leads, ‘let the chips fall where they may’. The work is marked by extensive research. It benefits from fresh evidence: from the Russian State Archives, from police files on…
Category: Reviews
Tomás Ó Sé’s own story
The White Heat: My Autobiography by Tomás Ó Sé (Gill & Macmillan 2015) The narrative in this autobiography is simple and direct, the way Tomás played his football: An Módh Díreach, as he himself would put it. Another refreshing aspect of it is the paucity of expletives. Notoriously his uncle Páidí’s autobiography was vitiated by an overload…
The World of Books
Ireland’s troubles in fact and fiction It is inevitable that the flood of books about 1916 should include some novels. But the precedents for such fictions are not good, as I know from reading many of them while writing my account of the literary revival and the Irish revolution, The Heart Grown Brutal (1977). There…
Minding our own minds
Protecting Mental Health by Dr Keith Gaynor(Veritas, €12.99) Mental health is an issue that affects every family in some way or another. Historians have traced out how the mentally ill were treated – or rather not treated – in the Georgian and Victorian periods. Today we can assume that treatments have improved, and yet, as…
Impressive canine heroics on penguin colony down under
Oddball and the Penguins (G) Foxes are killing baby penguins on their colony on Middle Island, which is off the coast of the south-western Australian town of Warrnambool. There used to be thousands of penguins there. Now they’re in danger of extinction, the predatory foxes making their way across the shallow channel from the mainland…
Between one war and another: Four days in June 1921
Truce: Murder, myth and the last days of the Irish war of independence by Padráig Óg Ó Ruairc (Mercier Press, Cork, €17.99) Ian D’Alton The Irish Revolution industry marches on. This book is somewhat ahead of the centenary of the events it chronicles, so it is almost a welcome diversion from the veritable tsunami of books about…
T.S. Eliot: The years of growth
Young Eliot: From St Louis to The Waste Land by Robert Crawford (Jonathan Cape, €31.50 hb) John Wyse Jackson The two most important early works of modernist literature were published in the same year, 1922: Ulysses, by James Joyce, and The Waste Land, by T S Eliot. Both writers are still widely read and studied, and…
Protests and cheers at CoE’s ‘Pray for Dawkins’ tweet
When the Church of England twitter account reacted to news that Richard Dawkins had had a mild stroke by tweeting “Prayers for Prof Dawkins and his family”, the tweet’s author didn’t expect the ensuing storm of protest, along with cheers from those who thought it a hilarious thing for them to have done. Anxious to…
Election debate from same old script
Brendan O’Regan reflects on the Election’s media debates being delivered by a “bunch of actors” In every media debate on the General Election it’s like we’re getting the same script, but spoken by a different bunch of actors each time, so I prefer the independent analysis. I’m not a fan of Newstalk’s Breakfast Show, but…
President Griffith: A greater man than many think
Arthur Griffith by Owen McGee (Merrion Press, €27.00) Colum Kenny Arthur Griffith, the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State in 1922, deserves more respect than he gets. This intriguing and polemical volume will help to redress the balance. Born in Dominick Street in 1872, and having shared the hardships of so…