R.V. Comerford’s The Fenians in Context, re-issued in paperback after thirteen years, has not aged gracefully. To revisit it is to be reminded of a particularly complacent moment in 1980s historical revisionism, then at its peak. By 1988 Comerford’s arguments were still sufficiently state-of-the-art to be incorporated wholesale into the relevant section of R.F. Foster’s ... Read more
