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Life
Rankin Professor of Modern History and Director of the Institute of Irish Studies, at Liverpool University; author on United Irishmen; authoritative biographer of leading United Irishman in Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence (1989); The Catholics of Ulster: A History (2000); When God Took Sides: Religions and Identity in Irish History (2009); first holder of the Blair Chair of Irish History at Liverpool, created by the Irish Govt. in recognition of Tony Blair’s part in the N. Ireland Peace Process, 2007.
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Works
Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence (London & New Haven: Yale UP 1989); The Catholics of Ulster: A History (London: Allen Lane 2000), 642pp.; When God Took Sides: Religions and Identity in Irish History - An Unfinished History (Oxford UP 2009), 320pp.
See extensive remarks under Wolfe Tone (Commentary, [infra]).
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Commentary
Paul Bew, review of The Catholics of Ulster: A History (2000), speaks of 5,000 document archive of Lord O’Hagan, Lord Chancellor of Ireland in Gladstone’s first and second administrations who married into the prosperous Teeling family, not used here at all, though the Teeling’s eighteenth-century role is brilliantly discussed; generally critical of the stance that Ulster Catholics can be seen as naturally loyal to the crown; Sir Charles Russell is seen to have poisoned Gladstone’s mind against Ulster Presbyterianism. (Times Literary Supplement, [Irish Issue], 29 June 2001, p.11.)
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