Sir,—Re Ian McCabe’s article ‘Leaving the Commonwealth’ in the lastissue (HI Winter 1998). In the course of an interview, an esteemedretired practitioner of diplomacy insisted that the Republic of Irelandnever, in so many words, procedurally left the Commonwealth. She waslocked out by a peppery Britain still trailing clouds of empiregrandeur. It took a lot of … Read more
Sir,—I read Frank Foley’s article ‘Controversy and the Cult of Collins’(HI Winter 1998) with great interest. Various points of view concerningthe future of the Collins memorial at Béal na mBláth are expressed,except that of the actual visitor. I am what Fr. Twohig would call anoutsider and a foreigner but also a frequent visitor to Ireland … Read more
Sir,—Timothy Bowman’s review of the latest Myles Dungan book (They Shall Not Grow Old: Irish Soldiers and the Great War, HI Winter 1998) is too kind. Dungan’s previous compilation, Irish Voices from the Great War, was a dissapointment to many, including myself. Consider the following passage on page 202: But even in its final moments … Read more
Both these books contain stern critiques of twentieth-century Irish nationalism, which has underpinned the creation of a sovereign twenty-six-county Republic. They represent interdisciplinary forays into history by on the one hand two sociologists from Cork and Belfast and on the other by a British defence specialist with rather mixed results. Rethinking Irish History represents the … Read more
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