Ireland is a strikingly different country now to the one it was in the mid 1990s. The decline of the traditionally powerful Catholic Church, revelations about abuse and corruption and increasingly-secular debate about such topics as abortion and same-sex marriage indicated the scale of the social and cultural transformation as did the new diversity of the population. The peace process, that saw an end to war in Northern Ireland and culminated ...
The history of the war that shaped the Irish political landscape across the twentieth century and up to the present day, by Ireland's most prominent academic and broadcast historian
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONSIDE NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 The islands off the coast of Ireland have long been a source of fascination. Seen as repositories of an ancient Irish culture and the epitome of Irish romanticism, they have attracted generations of scholars, artists and filmmakers, from James Joyce to Robert O'Flaherty, looking for a way of life uncontaminated by modernity or materialism. But the reality for islanders has been a lot ...
Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2019'Anyone who wishes to understand why Brexit is so intractable should read this book. I can think of several MPs who ought to.' The TimesFor the past two decades, you could cross the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic half a dozen times without noticing or, indeed, turning off the road you were travelling. It cuts through fields, winds back-and-forth ac...
This book explores the official 50th anniversary commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising in the Irish Republic how the government reinvented the message of 1916 through the jubilee celebrations, the organization of various unofficial commemorations in Northern Ireland, and the significance of these for nationalist and unionist politics in the mid-1960s. The book also examines the 1966 anniversary celebration of the Rising from the perspective...
Explores the extraordinary relationship the Irish have with alcohol from the point of view of the group who were intent on reducing alcohol consumption through membership in the Pioneer Total Abstinence of the Sacred Heart. The Pioneers was formed in 1898, by the mid 1950s the association was to claim a membership of nearly half a million, identifiable by the wearing of a pin, the outward expression of an internal and deeply personal piety. It...
A history and consideration of the way of life on Ireland's offshore islands, shattering cheerful illusions of life at the edge of Europe, past and present.
In 1900, Ireland was a restless, impoverished, neglected corner of the British Empire. By 2000, it had become the "Celtic Tiger" of Europe. This landmark book is a comprehensive social, political, cultural, intellectual, and economic survey of that Irish century.
A ground-breaking history of the twentieth century in Ireland, written on the most ambitious scale by a brilliant young historian. It is significant that it begins in 1900 and ends in 2000 - most accounts have begun in 1912 or 1922 and largely ignored the end of the century. Politics and political parties are examined in detail but high politics does not dominate the book, which rather sets out to answer the question: 'What was it like to grow...
Packed with violence, political drama and social and cultural upheaval, the years 1913-1923 saw the emergence in Ireland of the Ulster Volunteer Force to resist Irish home rule and in response, the Irish Volunteers, who would later evolve into the IRA. World War One, the rise of Sinn F¿, intense Ulster unionism and conflict with Britain culminated in the Irish war of Independence, which ended with a compromise Treaty with Britain and then the ...
Hard-nosed scholarship and moral passion underpin Diarmaid Ferriter's work. Now he turns to the key years of the 70s, when after half a century of independence, questions were being asked about the old ways of doing things. Ambiguous Republic considers the widespread social, cultural, economic and political upheavals of the decade, a decade when Ireland joined the EEC, when for the first time a majority of the population lived in urban areas, ...
Years of Turbulence showcases many new perspectives on the Irish revolutionary period of 1912-23. This fascinating collection not only focus on new angles, but also revisit traditional assumptions, and elaborate on some of the central debates on the revolutionary period. Many muted voices of the revolution are given a platform for the first time.
