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…
Tag: Free State
On this day: The Signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty
On this day, after over a month of arduous and sometimes ill-tempered negotiation, delegates representing Dáil Éireann, the break-away Irish parliament, signed an agreement with the British government that brought to an end the political violence that had wracked Ireland…
Book Review: Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923
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…
‘Kevin O’Higgins’ Comma’
One of the most popular posts on this website – for whatever reason – is Significant Commas in Irish History. While looking for something completely different, I came across an article in The Irish Jurist about the second of the…
Review of Unapproved Routes by Peter Leary
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…
Why the most northern part of Ireland is in the south
“British Isles Euler diagram 15” by TWCarlson – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons. Some years ago I created the following guide to the minefield of names for the constituent parts of the, err, am I allowed…
Book Review: Fatal Path by Ronan Fanning
This book was published last year to much acclaim. There were lots of complimentary reviews, and I’m not going to dissent here from the majority view. Ronan Fanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin and this…
Book Review: Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies
I bought this book on a whim, partly because I guessed (correctly) that it would have something in it about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is a casual interest of mine. Judging by what I’ve found on the internet, the book…
Book review: Acts of Union and Disunion, by Linda Colley
I bought this on a whim last week and have now almost finished reading it. It’s based on the BBC Radio 4 radio series of the same name, which dealt with the various acts and processes that have either bound…
My top books on Irish history
There are a lot of books on Irish history, and the current Decade of Commemoration has prompted a flood of new ones. Here’s my choice of a few of those that have been around for a while but are still…