Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 312
Throw in the Vowels: New and Selected Poems by Rita Ann Higgins
Trade Paperback; 16.00 Euro / 18.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 224 pages
Throw in the Vowels is a new retrospective from Rita Ann Higgins: provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinx, jittery grief and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of the Irish dispossessed.
‘A brilliantly spiky, surreal blend of humour and social issues. Her poems are a witty mix of the erotic and the upfront political from a female perspective, with wonderful rhythms that effortlessly incorporate direct speech’ – Ruth Padel, Independent on Sunday
‘A quite untameable poet. Higgins roams the provincial towns and countryside of Ireland fomenting rebellion and writing with unstaunchable energy of everything warm and unrespectable in Irish life. Her voice is like nobody else’s, simple but not naive, raucous but sympathetic’ – Peter Porter, PBS Bulletin
‘Higgins’s voices are so distinctive and real that a whole world of semi-rural Irish poverty rises around the reader with the jolting acuity of an excellent documentary…an hilarious, absorbing and thoroughly disturbing experience’ – Kate Clanchy, Independent
‘Rita Ann Higgins means a unique line in human warmth; and a unique colour of humour and a unique clarity’ – Paul Durcan
The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798-1882 by Michael de Nie
Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 25.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 320 pages [Add To Basket]
In The Eternal Paddy, Michael de Nie examines anti-Irish prejudice, Anglo-Irish relations, and the construction of Irish and British identities in nineteenth-century Britain. This book provides a new, more inclusive approach to the study of Irish identity as perceived by Britons and demonstrates that ideas of race were inextricably connected with class concerns and religious prejudice in popular views of both peoples. De Nie suggests that while traditional anti-Irish stereotypes were fundamental to British views of Ireland, equally important were a collection of sympathetic discourses and a self-awareness of British prejudice. In the pages of the British newspaper press, this dialogue created a deep ambivalence about the Irish people, an ambivalence that allowed most Britons to assume that the root of Ireland's difficulties lay in its Irishness.
Drawing on more than ninety newspapers published in England, Scotland, and Wales, The Eternal Paddy offers the first major detailed analysis of British press coverage of Ireland over the course of the nineteenth century. This book traces the evolution of popular understandings and proposed solutions to the "Irish question," focusing particularly on the interrelationship between the press, the public, and the politicians. The work also engages with ongoing studies of imperialism and British identity, exploring the role of Catholic Ireland in British perceptions of their own identity and their empire.
A Doctor’s War by Aidan MacCarthy
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 160 pages
Researching McCarthy’s Bar Pete McCarthy entered MacCarthy’s Bar in Castletownbere, west Cork. While there Adrienne MacCarthy gave him a copy of her father’s wartime memoir. Pete found it ‘unputdownable’. An RAF medical officer, Aidan served in France, survived Dunkirk, and was plunged into adventures in the Far East. In 1944, en route to the Japanese mainland, his ship was torpedoed but a Japanese whaling boat picked him up and he was re-interned on the mainland. In Nagasaki his life was literally saved by the dropping of the atomic bomb and he was an eyewitness to the horror and devastation it caused. Finally, he cruised home on board the Queen Mary.
Passing Through: The 82nd Airborne Division in Northern Ireland 1943-44 by John P. McCann
Trade Paperback; 14.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 128 pages, with full-colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
On 9 December 1943 the first men of the United States 82nd Airborne Division set foot on Northern Irish soil. By the end of that day 12,000 of them had been disembarked from their ships and were being transported to camps throughout the Province. By March the following year, however, they had all moved on again, to England and something bigger - the final preparations for the invasion of Europe.
As a child growing up in the small County Derry town of Castledawson, John McCann uncovered many ‘treasures’ in the family garden - an occasional tin can, the odd leather boot, an embossed button, a large buckle, the odd glass bottle, a few cooking pots of various sizes and bullets, yes bullets! These discoveries led him, in later years, to question their source and this book is the result of that questioning and four years hard research.
In these pages John looks not just at the 82nd’s short stay in Northern Ireland but also its service in North Africa, Sicily and Italy and later the missions in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany beginning with D-Day on 6 June 1944, all told using the reminiscences of the men who proudly served with the 82nd Airborne Division.
The Steam Age in Ireland: A Collection of Railway Art by The Lord O’Neill
Hardback; 45.00 Euro / 55.00 USD / 30.00 UK; 128 pages with full-colour and illustrations throughout
Few things are more evocative of a bygone era than a well-executed painting. The Steam Age in Ireland depicts the golden age of railway travel, bringing to life a period when most photographers used black and white film and when colour pictures were rare.
Using art as a medium of communication allows us to play out our fantasies, creating scenes as we imagine them to have been. Between the covers of this book you will see many different styles and interpretations. Most of the artists are contemporary; most of the paintings are commissions - some for book covers, some for posters but the majority for private individuals who, for their own enjoyment, want a particular scene to be immortalised in a painting.
These pictures allow us to recapture the trains of our youth, when, as well as passengers, the country railway conveyed cattle, coal, racing pigeons, letters and milk churns.
Citybus: Belfast’s Buses 1973-1988 by Will Hughes
Trade Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 18.00 UK; 180 pages, with full-colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout
In this long-awaited addition to the Buses in Ulster series, Will Hughes looks at Belfast's red buses from the takeover in 1973 to the retirement of Managing Director Werner Heubeck in 1988.
This was a difficult period for the new company, with many vehicles maliciously destroyed and passenger numbers in decline. It was, however, a time of much interest to the enthusiast with numerous vehicles acquired second-hand from operators throughout England - Daimler Fleetlines from Potteries Motor Traction and Northern General, AEC Merlins and Swifts from London and Eastern Coach Works-bodied Bristol REs from various National Bus Company subsidiaries.
All of the types of vehicles operated are illustrated, as are some of the people who worked on them. Interesting asides are the sections on preserved former Citybus vehicles and those buses which operated in the city during the period covered and then moved 'Beyond Belfast'.
Car Ferries of the Irish Sea 1954-2004 by Justin Merrigan
Trade Paperback; 20.50 Euro / 25.00 UK / 16.00 UK; 168 pages, with full-colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout [Add To Basket]
At the Court of Inquiry into the loss of the Princess Victoria on 31 January 1953 it was declared that as the ship was, to some degree, experimental her owners should have kept a closer eye on the design and construction. Ship design has changed dramatically over the last fifty years and on the Irish Sea in 2004 we have the giant 208 metre long Ulysses, with capacity for 1875 passengers and 1342 cars and the Stena HSS ships, which are capable of more than 40 knots.
In the pages of this book Justin Merrigan looks at the story of the Irish Sea car ferry since 1954. His research has uncovered much information and every ship is illustrated. Ro/Ro freight ships are outside the boundaries of this title, but as RoPax vessels are the modern day development of the freight vessel and passenger car ferry he has included a considerable number of these important ships, with passenger certificates in excess of 200 persons, which have appeared in these waters.
Mystical Landscapes: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn Kumpf
28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK [Add To Basket]
This ancient land of misty hollows and humid light has been shaped by the forces of nature and the hand of man from the highest of the windswept highlands to the rain-blasted cliffs and strands of the coastline. (28 color images.)
Misty Places and Tranquil Light: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn Kumpf
28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK [Add To Basket]
Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle, a paradise of green, a place of rich and robust color. It is also a land of line, form, and constantly changing light. This makes it an ideal place to explore, slowly and intentionally, in black and white. (28 B&W images.)
The Burren: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn Kumpf
28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK [Add To Basket]
The Burren is an amazing expanse of limestone cliffs and plateaus in northwest County Clare. Lacking the lush greens which so distinguish Ireland, the grey limestone pavements often shock the first-time visitor with their severity and starkness. But the Burren is far from just the stony place its ancient name implies, and a closer look reveals a landscape full of life and vitality. (28 color images.)
Embracing the Magic: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn Kumpf
28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK [Add To Basket]
From the eerie starkness of the Burren highlands to the rain-lashed cliffs and strands of the coastline, Ireland speaks of strength, of resonance, of life. Every square inch of Irish turf has been pressed flat by the tread of a human foot. Every mountain and lough has been host to a hero, every new scene draws the soul to another, and in Ireland especially, every place name is linked to some special character or event in the past. (28 B&W images.)
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