Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2010)

An illustrated history of the Phoenix Park: landscape and management to 1880 John A. McCullen (Office of Public Works, Ä40) ISBN 9781406424256

John A. McCullen’s Illustrated history of the Phoenix Park does exactly what it says on the tin. A detailed description and time-line of the landscape management and design of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, it is published in a lavish large-format volume, and gorgeously illustrated with over 240 maps, plans and full-page colour prints. McCullen is chief … Read more

The Irish church and the Tudor reformations Henry A. Jefferies (Four Courts Press, €55) ISBN 9781846820502

The past twenty years or so have witnessed an upsurge in the academic study of Tudor Ireland. A number of young scholars were inspired by a series of important essays dealing with the Irish reformation by Brendan Bradshaw, Nicholas Canny and Karl Bottigheimer in the 1970s and 1980s and influenced by diocesan studies undertaken by … Read more

Captain Rock: the Irish agrarian rebellion of 1821–1824 James S. Donnelly Jr (The Collins Press, £19.96) ISBN 9781848890107

The ‘Captain Rock’ campaign of 1821–4 is one in a series of outbreaks of agrarian unrest that began in the 1760s and continued until the eve of the Famine, when starvation finally made concerted action impossible and the landlords closed in to make the evictions and clearances they had long desired. The Rock years were … Read more

Bookworm

       ‘MARRIED WOMAN GETS DEGREE’ was the immortal headline in a Mayo newspaper in 1955 when local woman Sheila Mulloy (née O’Malley) was awarded a Ph.D for her research on correspondence between France and Ireland during the Williamite War. Over the following years she raised eight children yet still found time to edit … Read more

Museum eye:Ireland in Turmoil: the 1641 depositions The Long Room, Trinity College Library, Dublin http://www.tcd.ie/history/1641 Until 3 April 2011 by Tony Canavan

If you are a first-time visitor to the Old Library in Trinity College, then a ticket for €9 is good value as it includes the Book of Kells exhibition as well as the Long Room, where ‘Ireland in Turmoil’ is located. This marks the transfer to a website of all the 1641 depositions with ‘translations’ … Read more