Category: Reviews

Book reviews of works about Irish history.

Longer book review: An Accidental Villain: Sir Hugh Tudor, Churchill’s Enforcer in Revolutionary Ireland – Linden MacIntyre

by Bruce Gaston • 12 June 2026

As mentioned here, my review of An Accidental Villain: Sir Hugh Tudor, Churchill’s Enforcer in Revolutionary Ireland, by Linden MacIntyre, appeared in the Review of Irish Studies in Europe, vol. 9 (1) in April 2026. Here’s the link: https://doi.org/10.32803/rise.v9i1.3448. The…

Book review: An Accidental Villain: Sir Hugh Tudor, Churchill’s Enforcer in Revolutionary Ireland – Linden MacIntyre

by Bruce Gaston • 24 April 2026

This is just a quick post to say that my review of An Accidental Villain: Sir Hugh Tudor, Churchill’s Enforcer in Revolutionary Ireland, by Linden MacIntyre, has just been published in the Review of Irish Studies in Europe, vol. 9…

Review of The Root of All Evil – Cormac Moore

by Bruce Gaston • 18 July 2025

I’ve just finished reading Cormac Moore’s book on the Irish Boundary Commission (published this year, the 100th ‘anniversary’ – if that’s the right word – of the conclusion of the Commission’s enquiries). The broad facts behind the setting up of…

Two Northern Irish book reviews:
Paramilitary Loyalism: Identity and Change/A Difficult Birth: The Early Years of Northern Ireland, 1920–5

by Bruce Gaston • 1 May 2021

Richard Reed, Paramilitary Loyalism: Identity and Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) Alan F. Parkinson, A Difficult Birth: The Early Years of Northern Ireland, 1920–5 (Dublin: Eastwood, 2020) As preparation for a guest lecture I gave at the University of…

Review of The Border by Diarmaid Ferriter

by Bruce Gaston • 27 October 2019

The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics Diarmaid Ferriter Profile Books London A combination of the Decade of Commemoration in Ireland and the shenanigans around a Brexit deal have led to a renewed focus on the…

Book Review: Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923

by Bruce Gaston • 6 February 2019

Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923 Maurice Walsh Faber & Faber So much has been published about the Irish revolutionary period (1910-1923) over the course of the last few years that one has to be selective about…

Link

My review of Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic: Transformation, Dislocation and Fantasy in Fin-de-siècle Paris by David Charles Rose has just been published online and will be included in the next issue (26.3) of Irish Studies Review.

Review of Unapproved Routes by Peter Leary

by Bruce Gaston • 29 June 2017

I saw this advertised somewhere recently and as it seemed relevant to my teaching about Northern Ireland at the minute I ordered it and read it. It’s an attractively produced little volume with elegant typesetting and a number of well…

The Red Hand of Ulster by George A. Birmingham:
A Review

by Bruce Gaston • 20 February 2015

My attention was first called to Ulster-born writer George A. Birmingham by a review of his novel The Major’s Candlesticks on the Reading 1900–1950 blog. That novel is a comedy set in the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence…

Aside

From one review of Ireland and the British Empire (which I’ve just ordered from amazon.co.uk):

Apparently de Valera was furious with Costello when he announced, in 1948, that the newly declared Republic would be leaving the Commonwealth, shortly before India and Pakistan announced that, as republics, they would stay in, on just the sort of terms as de Valera had wanted.

Full book details: Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series), edited by Kevin Kenny (OUP, 2006)

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