Two giants of Irish history
Big Fellow, Long Fellow: A Joint Biography of Collins and de Valera by T. Ryle Dwyer Gill & Macmillan 371pp, £19.99
A lion come to rest
James Larkin: Lion of the Fold edited by Donal Nevin Gill & Macmillan, in association with RTE and SIPTU 557pp, £9.99
The illumination of WBY
Biography/Seamus Deane: This is the second of Roy Foster's two-volume biography of Yeats
Hyde deserved a more thorough account
Important aspects of the life and times of Ireland's first president, Douglas Hyde, are absent from a current television documentary…
Saint or sinner?
BIOGRAPHY: HARRY McGEE reviews Seán Lemass: Democratic Dictator By Bryce Evans The Collins Press, 328pp. €17.99
Capturing the drama and controversy of de Valera's 1919 visit to the US
BOOK OF THE DAY: ANNE DOLAN reviews De Valera in America: The Rebel President's 1919 Campaign by Dave Hannigan
A rebel who found his cause
BIOGRAPHY: Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary, By Seamus O'Siochain, Lilliput Press, 656pp
Portrait of a revolutionary afterlife
HISTORY: Broken Landscapes: Selected Letters of Ernie O’Malley, 1924-1957 Edited by Cormac KH O’Malley and Nicholas Allen The…
Who was the real Seán MacBride?
BIOGRAPHY: Seán MacBride: A Republican Life 1904-1946 By Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid Liverpool University Press 245pp. £65
Splendid, subtle and stimulating
LITERARY CRITICISM: Yeats & Violence , By Michael Wood, Oxford, 272pp. £18.99
The ABC of the Irish
REFERENCE: Dictionary of Irish Biography James McGuire and James Quinn, editors Royal Irish Academy/Cambridge University Press…
The maker of modern Ireland
POLITICS: Judging Lemass: The measure of the man By Tom Garvin Royal Irish Academy, 300pp. €30
The revolution's unsung hero
MICHAEL KENNEDY reviews My Father, The Genral by Ristéard Mulcahy, Liberties Oress, 283pp €17.99
Letters from an unselfconscious revolution
History: 'No Surrender Here!' - The Civil War Papers of Ernie O'Malley, 1922-1924 Edited by Cormac KH O'Malley and Anne Dolan…
The Long Fella re-imagined
History: This is a beautifully produced book. The Royal Irish Academy has certainly delivered for Dr Ferriter
Much more than an Irish nationalist
History: The words of Lord Acton in his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge have an especially…
The formation of a dictator
History Why do we find it so disconcerting to learn that a mass murderer such as Stalin loved gardening, music, literature, …
Collins for the Celtic Tiger cubs
Irish History: As Peter Hart observes, Michael Collins has had a remarkably easy ride from historians and biographers who have…
Inside the Blueshirt's closet
Biography: It has been a long time since anyone thought of Eoin O'Duffy as a hero
Enduring icon of Irish socialism
Biography The enduring power of James Connolly's reputation is a phenomenon in itself
Georgia on his mind A convincing account of how Stalin's childhood influenced his psychology
Biography/Stalin: A Biography By Robert: On my sideboard, I have mounted a permanent exhibition of political kitsch which includes…
A complex personality
Biography In the early 1970s, when I was a student, I found myself on a summer evening in the centre of Dublin with nothing …
Paving the way to hell
History: I despise reviewers who talk about themselves rather than their subject, but - while I will eventually get around to…
A bitter account blind to balance
W.B. Yeats has been the subject of much scholarly attention in recent times.
The dark colours of patriotism
I clearly remember the first time I read Tom Barry's IRA memoir, Guerilla Days in Ireland
Revenge of the spooks?
Biography/Declan Kiberd: 'It is easy to pelt a man who can't reply or who is gone," wrote Roger Casement during his last days…
The making of a revolutionary martyr
History: In September, 1911, Dr Herbert Spencer Dickey of New York introduced himself to Roger Casement in a hotel bar in Bridgetown…
A controversial, contradictory hero
Biography: Among the varied and extraordinary cast that participated in the drama that was the Irish independence movement of…
Struggle of the national being
George Russell (1867-1935) was born in Lurgan, the third child of a Methodist bookkeeper in a cambric manufacturers, and died…
The Abbey should not forget Lady Gregory
According to Lennox Robinson, Lady Gregory 'was - is - the Abbey'
A vivid, revealing jail journal
The Republicans lost the Civil War, but they won the battle of words which followed it
Synge a song of Wicklow
For Mc Cormack, the life and work of Synge is a narrative which involves, in all its local particularities, the crisis of the…
Peadar O'Donnell by Peter Hegarty (Mercier, £12.99)
This well-illustrated biography is rather weak on the historical background
Northern light
Scots-Irish to the core, Sam Hanna Bell was born in Glasgow in 1909, but came to live near the shores of Strangford Lough at …
Ernie O'Malley: IRA Intellectual by Richard English (Oxford, £12.99 in UK)
Ernie O'Malley was a daring guerilla leader and - as the title of this fine biography asserts - an intellectual
French view of the Big Fellow
IRISH history and politics, whatever meaning they may hold for the peoples of this island and the neighbouring one, are obscure…
Where did Yeats get his politics?
LIKE the souls in his play, Purgatory, it has been Yeats's fate to relive his transgressions, and that not once but many times…
The riddle of Erskine Childers
BORN in London, Erskine Childers spent part of his childhood in Glendalough, went to school in England, and worked as a Committee…
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Stardust
Inquests into the nightclub fire that led to the deaths of 48 people
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
Family NoticesOpens in new window
Weddings, Births, Deaths and other family notices