Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 397- 9 November 2007
Judging Dev by Diarmaid Ferriter
Hardback; 30 Euro / 40 USD / 20 UK; 396 pages, with black-and-white photos throughout
Eamon de Valera has often been characterised as a stern, un-bending, devious and divisive Irish politician. But how valid is this caricature? In "Judging Dev", Diarmaid Ferriter re-examines de Valera's life and legacy. It contains an in-depth analysis of the impact of de Valera and includes many previously unpublished key letters, documents and photographs from the National Archives of Ireland and the UCD Archives to chronicle the extraordinary career of the most significant politician of modern Irish history and his role in the history of the Irish state.
Luck and the Irish: A History of Change 1970-200 by R.F. Foster
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 30 Euro. Read Ireland Special Price: 25 Euro / 34 USD / 17 UK; 228 pages [Add To Basket]
From about 1970, Irish history moved into a fast-forward phase. Roy Foster's new book looks at the roots of the changes which came with an almost completely unexpected wave of prosperity. With sympathy, astringency and humour, he examines the upheavals in economics, North-South attitudes, international relations, demography, gender roles, sexual mores, culture and religion which accompanied the boom, as well as the significance of such emblematic characters as Mary Robinson, Bob Geldof and Charles Haughey. "Luck and the Irish" also discusses the themes of corruption, scandal, New Age Celticism, popular culture and the occasional retreat into reactionary attitudes that followed the liberalization, enrichment and marketing of the New Ireland: and what these transformations mean for Irish history in the long run.
The High Crosses of Ireland: Inspirations in Stone by Elinor D.U. Powell
Trade Paperback; 25 Euro / 35 USD / 18 UK; 190 pages, with full colour photos throughout
“Those great stone crosses standing out in Ireland’s countryside are the country’s greatest contribution to world sculpture, and contain the largest amount of religious carving preserved anywhere in Europe from the last quarter of the first Christian millennium. They are found in what are now churchyards, but were once monasteries of piety and peace which spread Ireland’s zeal for learning and scholarship across the European continent. These crosses stand as elegant monuments to a high civilisation, and their shape with the characteristic ring around the head became such a potent nationalistic symbol in the mid-nineteenth century that it was used for grave memorials on both sides of the Atlantic for those who wanted to identify themselves as Irish. . . .
The glory of Dr Powell’s book is that it allows us to stand, figuratively, in front of these High Crosses, to look in wonder at their varying shapes and sizes, and admire the quality of master carvers’ work of a thousand years ago. . . . It has been a great pleasure for me to re-live visits to these crosses through Dr Powell’s admirable and often atmospheric pictures, and I hope her sense of wonderment and delight will be communicated through them to the many readers of this truly remarkable volume.” — Dr Peter Harbison, Honorary Academic Editor of the Royal Irish Academy, from the Foreword
Legends of Irish Boxing by Barry Flynn
Hardback; 25 Euro / 33 USD / 17 UK; 190 pages, with full-colour and black-and-white photos throughout [Add To Basket]
This is an exciting look at some of the greatest names in Irish boxing. All your favourite Irish glovemen are here from Barry McGuigan, Wayne McCullough and 'Dave Boy' McAuley to older heroes such as Freddie Gilroy, Charlie Nash and John Caldwell. Many of Ireland's boxers came from deprived backgrounds where sport really did offer an escape route away from the Troubles or poverty to wealth, travel and sometimes celebrity. Almost all the boxers in this book represented Ireland and Northern Ireland at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games and brought home medals. For some this would be the pinnacle of their success but for others the adventure was just beginning. To paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel's song - 'The Boxer' - these are their 'stories seldom told'.
Eleven Houses: A Memoir of Childhood by Christopher Fitz-Simon
Hardback; 24 Euro / 30 USD / 15 UK; 290 pages
Christopher Fitz-Simon was born into an extraordinary Irish family, with Daniel O'Connell on one side and Ulster Protestants on the other, and his childhood coincided with the Second World War - or, as it was known in the southern Irish state, the Emergency. Eleven Houses is a crystalline memoir of his family's odd progress through those odd years, an account by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Christopher's father was an officer in the British army, serving in the Middle east when war broke out, and the family home in these years was in fact a series of homes, in all four provinces of Ireland. For long periods Christopher and his brother were not enrolled in school, and the commencement of formal education proved a shock after years of the freedom of houses, orchards, lanes and fields. Drawing on his extraordinarily vivid recall of the places and feelings of those years, Christopher Fitz-Simon tells a story of growing up that is also, in effect, a story of various hidden Irelands during the twilit years of the war. Funny, moving and sharp, it is a childhood memoir like no other.
The Pear is Ripe: A Memoir by John Montague
Hardback; 25 Euro / 36 USD / 18 UK; 240 pages
The Pear is Ripe covers a period of great social change and upheaval internationally and, in particular, the north of Ireland. Montague's proximity to these changes, by accident or design, was toinfluence his work and lends this memoir an immediacy that belies the intervening years. While much of the book covers the writer's public and literary life, it also addresses the strain that living apart from his wife Madeleine placed on their marriage - which would ultimately lead to their break-up.
While the book principally spans the period from the mid sixties to the late seventies, Montague has included a powerful and moving epilogue featuring more recent events. He writes of visiting young men with AIDS in a New York hospital, and of a final meeting with an ailing Samuel Beckett in Paris. Poetry Ireland director Joe Woods has spoken of the dearth of memoir by poets that may help to inform their work and its enjoyment. John Montague's book and its earlier companion Company: A Chosen Life hopefully will set a trend for some of the other workers in song to follow suit. In short, The Pear Is Ripe is a startling testimony from an engaging writer at the peak of his powers.
Francis Stuart: Artist and Outcast by Kevin Kiely
Trade Paperback; 23 Euro / 30 USD / 15 UK; 366 pages [Add To Basket]
Francis Stuart (1902-2000) was the author of 25 novels, including Black List, Section H, and was critically acclaimed by W.B Yeats among others. He is arguably best known, however, for his broadcasts from Berlin for Hitler’s Third Reich – a source of lifelong controversy – which led to accusations of being a Nazi collaborator and an anti-Semite. Kevin Kiely, who first met Francis Stuart in the 1970s, recounts the controversial writer’s fascinating life: his father’s suicide when Stuart was an infant; his marriage at age seventeen to Maud Gonne’s daughter, Iseult, a former lover of Ezra Pound’s who had refused W.B Yeats’ marriage proposals; his time as an IRA gunrunner during the Civil War; his burgeoning literary career and the many controversies that surrounded him throughout his life.
In the 1930s Stuart left Ireland to lecture in Berlin, where he made the notorious broadcasts during the war, and married a Polish refugee who was accused of being a Nazi spy. Returning home in the 1960s, Stuart eventually became a respected figure and in 1982 he was invited into Aosdána, the Irish academy of artists and writers.
His membership and elevation to Saoi of Aosdána, its highest reward for artistic achievement, became the subject of more controversy and caused leading Irish writers to split into pro-Stuart and anti-Stuart camps. Accusations of anti-Semitism pursued Stuart into his nineties when he was forced to take a libel action against The Irish Times and won. The debate about Francis Stuart, however, rages on.
In this compelling and highly readable biography, Kiely considers the philosophical and literary beliefs – and extraordinary life – of one of Ireland’s most controversial figures.
Hidden Streams: A New History of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown by Brian Mac Aongusa
Hardback; 25 Euro / 36 USD / 18 UK; 190 pages, with full-colour and black-and-white photographs throughout [Add To Basket]
In "Hidden Streams", local historian Brian Mac Aongusa takes the reader on a voyage of discovery of the past in the area of south County Dublin that is now known as Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. The history of the area has been deeply influenced by many of its rivers and streams, of which there are about thirty in the county. By tracing the significance of rivers and streams in the lives of the first prehistoric inhabitants, the early Christians, the Vikings and the Anglo-Normans, this book throws a new light on many of the monuments and landscape features that are still visible today.A study of early maps of the county from 1685 onwards reveals a fascinating world of water-powered industries, side by side with the growth of the first township suburbs of Kingstown, Blackrock, Killiney and Ballybrack, and Dalkey. In the twentieth century the unrelenting growth of Dublin's southern suburbs has severely impacted on the landscape and character of the county, causing many of its small rivers and streams to be smothered by developments that have driven them underground, or out of sight or even out of memory. This book seeks to unlock a fascinating new history of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown
The Book of Celtic Verse: A Treasury of Poetry, Dreams and Visions edited by John Matthews
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 20 Euro. Read Ireland Price: 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 244 pages [Add To Basket]
The Celts have always loved words. They called their earliest bards 'Carpenters of Song' and 'People of Skill', and established a tradition which began with the intricate magical poems of Taliesin in the 6th century AD, continued in the rich Medieval works of Dafydd ap Gwilym and Rhys Goch, and in the 19th century work by Gerald Manley Hopkins, and can be found in the of 20th century work of writers such as R.J. Stewart, Robin Williamson and Catherine Fisher as well as a legion of other Celtic song-smiths, who have carried the torch of verse-craft and vision into our own time. John Matthews has chosen the finest works by these writers, and has translated many of the oldest for this volume. His selection reflects aspects of the Celtic tradition which are unique to these people: a love of nature, of history, and of the rich heritage of myth, legend, magic and spirituality which is among the finest in the world. We are the music-makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams; etc.
Personal Narratives of Irish and Scottish Migration, 1921-65 by Angela McCarthy
Hardback; 80 Euro / 110 USD / 55 UK; 260 pages [Add To Basket]
Between 1921 and 1965, Irish and Scottish migrants continued to seek new homes abroad. Using the personal accounts of these migrants from letters, interviews, questionnaires, and shipboard journals, together with more traditional documentary sources such as immigration files and maritime records, this book examines the experience of migration and settlement in North America and Australasia. Through a close reading of personal testimonies the author highlights the assorted similarities and differences between the Irish and Scots. Subtle differences rather than yawning cultural gaps are apparent; similarities in attitude and expectation are more common than divergent or unique experiences. The key revelation of the work is that, despite a number of peculiarities characterising their individual and collective experiences of migration, both the Irish and Scots were relatively successful migrants in the period under consideration. Using interviews, both spoken and written, and tackling issues of why and how versions of the past are represented and what they mean, this fascinating study considers individual and collective memory and the use of personal testimonies as historical evidence: their uniqueness and typicality. Furthermore, in using personal narratives the book portrays individual migration experiences which are often hidden in studies based on statistical analysis.
Achill Voices by Robert Redmond
Trade Paperback; 20 Euro / 28 USD / 14 UK; 120 pages, with full colour photos throughout [Add To Basket]
Achill Island, off the coast of County Mayo, is a beautiful island renowned for its sandy beaches and dramatic sea cliffs. Increasingly popular with both Irish and overseas visitors, Achill is accessible from the mainland yet remote enough to remain unspoilt. "Achill Voices" features photographs taken by the author and tales collected from inhabitants that combine to create a fascinating book, appealing to island citizens and visitors alike.
Finding Birds in Ireland: The Complete Guide by Eric Dempsey and Michael O’Clery
Trade Paperback with Endflaps; 20 Euro / 28 USD / 14 UK; 360 pages, with full colour illustrations and maps throughout [Add To Basket]
Organised county by county, this is an easy-to-follow handbook giving the site names, grid references, detailed directions and maps for each site. It includes the best times to visit each area, a breakdown of the different seasons and the species you are likely to find, and lists rare birds seen at each site in the past. "Finding Birds in Ireland" will become a well-thumbed addition to any birdwatcher's reference library as well as a celebratory record of the beauty and variety of birds in Ireland.
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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