GERARD MURPHY The Collins Press €19.99 ISBN 9781848893375 Reviewed by: Nigel Jones Nigel Jones is a former editor of History Today and BBC History Magazine. The fatal shooting of Michael Collins in his own Cork countryside not only deprived Ireland of its most dynamic, gifted and charismatic leader but also left an enduring mystery. Was … Read more
TIMOTHY O’NEILL Cork University Press €39 This book is a celebration of a core element in any culture whose memory has been committed to writing: its script. Writing in its origins may be the medium and servant of a culture and memory but becomes through its transmission the expression and articulation of a society’s culture … Read more
Mel Gibson’s recently released film Braveheart, based rather loosely on the life of the Scots hero William Wallace, has engendered much debate and not a little criticism. It is a far from perfect production with many distortions of fact and some cringe-inducing historical gymnastics. In many cases these misconstructions were not necessary. We could have … Read more
Keogh’s study of the relationship between the independent Irish state and the Vatican fills one lacuna in our understanding of the politics and diplomacy of Irish church-state relations and, to a lesser extent, international relations. Drawing on his earlier published work in this field and adding a substantial amount of new evidence collected from a … Read more
(3:1) Reviewed by Tony Canavan In the wake of the revisionist/anti-revisionist debate in Irish history, one approaches any book with a title like The Cause of Ireland with a certain trepidation, especially when the author’s previous works include Ireland: the Propaganda War. What one is afraid of is a romanticised unreconstructed nationalist narrative of the … Read more