Read Ireland Book News
Issue 98
Garvaghy: A Community Under Siege by the Garvaghy Residents (Paperback; 10.50 IEP / 15.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Since 1795, the Orange Order has been gathering at Drumcree Church and marching through Catholic areas of Portadown - 'the most bitter town in Ireland.' Over the last 30 years, the Obins Street/Tunnel area and the Garvaghy road have become world famous as the site of the struggles against institutionalised sectarianism in Northern Ireland. Every year since 1995, the residents have spent weeks hemmed in by the Orange mobs and ringed by units of the British Army. This sit-down protests have been brutally cleared by the Royal Ulster Constabulary; the public representatives have been attacked and sent death threats; and finally, their lawyer, Rosemary Nelson, was murdered by a car bomb. This book is based on the diaries kept by the people of the Garvaghy area and contains many photographs of their protests over the years. They tell stories of fear and anxiety, of hope and loss, and of courage and community organisations, and the reveal the real price of 'Orange feet on the Garvaghy Road.'
Tracing Your Irish Ancestors 2nd edition by John Grenham (Paperback; 12.99 IRP / 18.85 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is already well-established as the standard guide book for Irish genealogy. This revised and expanded edition reinforces the book's position as the leading authority in its field. The principal changes made for this new edition are: The existing material has been updated and augmented by new sources that have emerged in recent years; a comprehensive listing of all known copies of Roman Catholic Records, covering dates, locations and formats, is included for the first time (This is one of the most important of all Irish genealogical sources.); there is less dependence on Dublin repositories; the new edition includes details of the Family History Centres of the Mormon Church, one of the world's richest genealogical archives.
Step Together: Ireland's Emergency Army 1939-46 as told by its Veterans by Donal MacCarron (hardback; 19.95 IRP / 28.95 USD) [Add To Basket]
Ireland adopted a neutrality policy during the Second World War which was locally known as 'the Emergency'. At the outbreak of the war, Irish defence forces were in a poor state; hence the creation of the Emergency Army. This fully illustrated oral history is an anecdotal and often funny account of the time. Based on the author's interviews with the men who served in 'the Emergency', giving immediate eyewitness accounts of recruitment, training and serving in the army. It includes the national 'Call to Arms', basic training, the equipment; 'Shoots' by Coast Artillery and in the Glen of Imaal; flying the planes; social events; the 'down' side; 'major manoeuvres' and parades and finally 'Stand-down.' Illustrated with rarely seen photographs.
Stories from Tory Island by Dorothy Harrison Therman (Paperback; 8.99 IRP / 13.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The author discovered the then isolated Irish island of Tory in 1979 in an art gallery in Edinburgh, where she bought a painting by one of the Tory 'primitive' artists. This was the beginning of a long involvement with Tory and its people. She first visited the island itself in 1981 and she was visited Tory almost every year since then, staring for periods of two to three weeks in all seasons, including winter, and making firm friends with local people, mainly the older islanders. This book is a loving transcription of her tape-recordings of conversations with the islanders, in whom she discovered a wealth of stories, folklore and reminiscences. Here are stories featuring death and loss, wakes and ghosts, childbirth and midwives' practices, cures and superstitions, pranks and poitin-making, poverty and migration, saints, fairies and a mysterious 'elephant' found on the shore. It is a very important contribution to the story of Irish folklore and the oral tradition.
A New Partnership in Education: From Consultation to Legislation in the Nineties by John Walshe (Paperback; 17.00 IRP / 24.65 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is an impressively thorough and analytical book. It is also replete with incident and personalities, and with the subtle role of the media in education policy formation. In the nineties, dialogue in the Irish education system has been frenetic and painful at times. But it has gradually led to an extraordinary cohesion and partnership in the system. The book tracks the major consultations - and confrontations - of the nineties and it explores the personalities and policies of the protagonists - ministers, officials, leaders of Church bodies and third-level institutions, representatives of teachers' unions and parents' organisations. All of the important consultation documents of the decade are here and the big issues are expertly set forth.
My Village My World by John M. Feehan (Paperback; 5.99 IEP / 9.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a fascinating account of the live of ordinary people in the countryside half a century ago. It depicts a way of life that took thousands of years to evolve and mature and was destroyed in a single generation. Although the people of Feehan;s village were never famous and might now be described as 'unskilled', this world be a false description. They were all highly skilled, whether in making coffins, droving cattle or tending to horses. The world described with such vivacity in this lively memoir was not idyllic. There were sinners as well as saints, all ordinary mortals.
Healing Amid the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lo (1945-46) by Phyllis Gaffney (Paperback; 14.99 IEP / 21.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
During the Normandy landings of June 1944, the German-occupied town of Saint-Lo, in the path of the invading armies, was bombed into rubble. Thousands died in the subsequent battle. When peace came the survivors struggled to rebuild their lives among the ruins. Help arrived from an unexpected source: neutral Ireland. The Irish Red Cross assembled an 100-bed hospital and shipped it to France. Fifty young Irish doctors, nurses and support staff gave of their best, giving hope as well as healing to the shattered town. Most had never been to France, although the storekeeper was a little-known Dublin man of letters, who had spent the war in France and was a member of the Resistance - Samuel Beckett. The Irish got on so well with the local people that their eventual departure gave rise to a political scandal, with bitter recriminations against local doctors who campaigned to remove them. Drawing on original documents, interviews with eyewitnesses and archival research in France, Ireland and Scotland, this book is the vivid story of a pioneering adventure in overseas aid and postwar reconstruction.
The Misfit Soldier: Edward Casey's War Story, 1914-1918 edited by Joanna Bourke (Paperback; 8.95 IEP / 13.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Edward Casey, an underfed, under-sized and semi-literate Irish Cockney from Canning Town, was no war hero. Even so, his account of four years of war service with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers is a remarkable chronicle, revealing his personal and sexual insecurities, his remarkable experience of Irish unrest during periods of training and leave and his excitement as a military tourist in France, Salonica and Malta. The memoir was written in 1980, six decades after his departure for New Zealand, yet retains a strong Cockney accent. The editor has selected the chapters with the greatest interest for Irish readers, placing Casey's story in the broader context of the Great War and its sometimes devastating psychological consequences.
A Policeman's Ireland: Recollection of Samuel Waters, RIC edited by Stephen Ball (Paperback; 8.95 IEP / 13.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Samuel Waters followed his father and grandfather into the Irish Constabulary, rising from district inspector in 1866 to assistant inspector-general. His colourful and unembittered recollections encompass the Fenian rising, the Land War and the 1916 resurrection, after which he retired to Skerries. These memoirs illuminate the intelligence work of the RIC, as well as the social and sporting compensations of a policeman's life in all four provinces. Water's records unexpectedly friendly interactions between police and army in which he had to restrain a group of Fenian fans from beating up his military opponents. This editor's introduction highlights the problems of policing in Ireland during a century and a half of turmoil.
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