Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 323
Memoir by John McGahern
Hardback; 23.00 Euro / 28.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 280 pages
This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature and his ambition to become a writer. At the heart of the book is an unembarrassed homage by a loving son to a woman who protected him and his sisters from his father's unpredictable moods. His memory of walks with her in the lanes near their rural home, of her naming flowers for him and of his joy in her presence, is recovered with great lyrical tact. The account of her courageous endurance of illness - with almost no support from her policeman husband, who was living in his barracks - is unsentimental and unforgettable. The day their mother died, the children were carted off to the barracks where their father the sergeant ruled over a few guards and a quiet countryside where crime was almost unknown, during the war years when Ireland was cut off from the outside world. McGahern describes an adolescence dancing attendance on a secretive, brutal and mercurial man who had only spasms of affection to give his bereft children. Often he reasoned with them by using his fists. McGahern's description of the fields and quiet roads of Co Leitrim, one of Ireland's least known counties, catches the subtle beauties of an often poor landscape of hill and bog. The memoir is also a great portrait of Ireland in the 1940s and 50s, a time of frugal comfort but also of low expectation and depression for many people in a country that seemed to have no future. The author barely escaped being removed from school to do menial work through his discovery of books in the library of a friendly, eccentric neighbour. He found his way to the life of the mind, and a dream that he could himself write stories in which language and feeling mattered as much as the form of the tale. This memoir includes McGahern's memories of Dublin in the 1960s, his time as a schoolteacher, and his sacking for writing a banned book (his second novel, "The Dark"). It ends with his return to live in Leitrim with his wife and the death of his father, difficult to the last.
The Politics of the Irish Civil War by Bill Kissane
Hardback; 60.00 Euro / 75.00 USD / 40.00 UK; [Add To Basket]
Based on extensive archival research this book situates the Irish civil war in the general process of decolonization in the twentieth century, and explains why divisions over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 proved so formative in the development of the Irish state. Each chapter is devoted to a particular aspect of the war and many new areas are explored. These include the role the doctrine of self-determination played in the Sinn Fein movement, the fate of numerous peace initiatives, the power struggle between de Valera and Liam Lynch within the IRA, and the impact of the civil war on the wider civil society. The last three chapters explore how the conflict has been interpreted by the actors themselves, as well as by historians. Combining perspectives drawn from history and politics, this book will interest not only students of Irish history, but also those interested in the comparative study of civil wars.
Irish Book of Death and Flying Ships: From the Chronicles of Ancient Ireland
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 160 pages, with illustrations throughout
Extracted from a table of cosmical phenomena, epizootics, famines and pestilences in Ireland (included in The Census of Ireland for the Year 1851), the monastic and other annals quoted here cover the earliest time to which tradition refers (as transmitted by the bards) and up to the end of the 11th century AD. The history of the early plagues shows that people tried to account for sudden outbursts of disease, either by the direct and miraculous interposition of Providence, or by some peculiar atmospheric condition. Published to accompany the Irish Census of 1851, this specially photo-illustrated edition provides a beautiful history of Celtic Ireland.
Illustrated History of Ireland: From 400 A.D. to 1800 A.D. by C.F. Cusack
Hardback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 670 pages [Add To Basket]
With evocative black and white drawings, this is a thorough yet accessible history of Ireland, written in 1868 and featuring the famous and infamous inhabitants and events of Ireland.
Siege at Jadotville: The Irish Army’s Forgotten Battle by Declan Power
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 9.00 UK; 300 pages
During the course of operations, a company of Irish troops was deployed to protect the inhabitants of the village of Jadotville. Not long after deployment, the troops found themselves heavily out-numbered and engaged in a pitched battle with native Congolese soldiers led by white mercenary officers. In addition to the overwhelming odds, the Irish also had to contend with being strafed by a jet and had no airpower or anti-aircraft defences to defend themselves. Appeals for re-supply from UN forces were to no avail. There were a number of attempts by Irish troops in the vicinity to mount a relief operation for their surrounded comrades. However, a mixture of superior fire, physical obstacles and political machinations within the UN led to abject failure. But after numerous rescue attempts failed and the Irish had fought to their last rounds of ammunition and were already using bayonets in hand-to-hand-fighting, Comdt Quinlan decided against the needless bloodshed of his men and surrendered.
Kitty O’Shea: An Irish Affair by Jane Jordan
Hardback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 20.00 UK; 277 pages
Kitty O'Shea (1846-1921) was at the centre of one of the most notorious scandals of the late Victorian Age - a scandal which brought the downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the movement for Home Rule for Ireland and crippling damage to the movement itself. In 1889, Parnell was named co-respondent in a divorce suit brought by one of his own MPs, Captain Willie O'Shea. Alleged to have conducted an ten-year affair with Mrs Katherine O'Shea, Parnell was also revealed to be the father of the three youngest O'Shea children. The divorce and the details it exposed was a great public scandal in Victorian England and Catholic Ireland. Yet Parnell refused to resign from his leadership of the Home Rule movement, which resulted in the split of his party. In this compelling new biography, Jane Jordan explores the central, still unanswered questions:Why did Parnell risk the political future of Ireland (and his own) in conducting an affair with a married woman? And was O'Shea a duped husband, as he maintained, or did he connive with his wife's adultery in order to further his own political career?
Till Death Do Us Part by Siobhan Gaffney
Paperback; 11.00 Euro / 14.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 200 pages [Add To Basket]
Colin Whelan and Mary Gough appeared to be like any young, married couple. They had been sweethearts and Colin won Mary's heart a few years before their wedding. The couple had been married just six months when Whelan called an ambulance saying his wife was badly injured as a result of falling down the stairs in the family home in Balbriggan, in north Co. Dublin. A post-mortem, however, established that she had been strangled. Whelan was charged with his wife’s murder in April 2001 but he disappeared while on bail in March 2003 before the trial began. He was thought to have taken his own life after his Peugeot 206 and a number of personal possessions were found near the sea at Howth’s Head in Co Dublin. A major sea, land and air search was carried out but his body was never found.
About 15 months later an Irish holidaymaker in Majorca recognised Whelan working in a bar and alerted the authorities. This is the true story of what happened. Court reporter, Siobhan Gaffney, explores the homicidal tendencies of Colin Whelan, which emerged before he even wed his young wife.
Ventry Calling by Bearnard O Lobhaing
Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 128 pages [Add To Basket]
Ventry Calling is a translation of Bearnard O Lubhaing's Ceann Tra hAon - a memoir originally published in 1998 by Coisceim and now translated by Gabriel Fitzmaurice. Ventry was a parish of two religions, Catholic and Protestant, which learned to live together. O Lubhaing's account of the religious and educational implications of this co-existence is carefully recalled. The rich archaeological heritage of the area, the feast days of the year, life in West Kerry during the Second World War, encounters with the Blasket Island heritage, are all lovingly related in this authoritative account by a Ventry native who went on to become a national school teacher, a member of An Taisce and a committed Gaelgeoir.
Childhood Interrupted: Growing Up Under the Cruel Regime of the Sisters of Mercy by Kathleen O’Malley
Large Format Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 244 pages [Add To Basket]
In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother and placed in an industrial school ran by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the notorious Magdalene Homes. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were permitted to leave the harsh and cruel regime of the institution at the age of sixteen. But Kate survived her traumatic childhood and escaped her past by leaving for England and then Australia when the British government offered a scheme to encourage settlement there. Fleeing her past again, Kate worked as a governess in Paris and then returned to England where she trained as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden. She married and had a son. A turning point in Kate's life came when she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to confront her hidden personal history and make it public. This is her inspiring story.
Collected Poems of Patrick Kavanagh
Paperback; 14.00 Euro / 19.00 USD / 11.00 UK; 300 pages [Add To Basket]
The centenary of Patrick Kavanagh's birth in 2004 provides the ideal opportunity to reappraise one of modern Ireland's greatest poets. From a harsh, humble background that he himself described so brilliantly, Kavanagh burst through immense constraints to redefine Irish poetry - a poetry appropriate for a fully independent country, both politically and culturally. Moving beyond Irish verse's preoccupation with history, national politics and identity, he turned to the land and scenery of his native Inniskeen, portraying the closely-observed minutiae of everyday rural and urban life in an uninhibited, groundbreaking style. Lucid, various, direct and engaging, Kavanagh's poems have a unique place in the canon and a unique accessibility. This major new edition is the culmination of many years of work by Antoinette Quinn in creating authoritative texts for Kavanagh's poetry - from his early works such as Inniskeen Road: July Evening' to his masterpiece, the epic The Great Hunger', allowing us to see the development of Kavanagh's genius as never before.
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